


In The End

by tea_and_outer_space



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Anxiety, Assassins & Hitmen, Asthma, Coffee Shops, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Panic Attacks, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Project Rebirth, Tea, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-03-25 00:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 54,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3790537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tea_and_outer_space/pseuds/tea_and_outer_space
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's his mission, and honestly, the Winter Solider never cared about missions.<br/>But when he drops down into the tiny Brooklyn apartment, he doesn't find a president, a CEO, a general, a war lord.<br/>Instead, he finds a shaking, coughing, man who looks like the wind could blow him away.<br/>The Winter Soldier's positive he could snap this man in half with one hand.<br/>And yet, the mission scowls, clenches his fists, speaks through raspy breaths.<br/>“What the hell are you doing in my apartment?”<br/>And, for a moment, the Winter Solider can't quite remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Sketchbook

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is AU. Like, really hella AU. A few things real quick.  
> So, I'm not sure if I got all of Steve's health maladies down accurately. There's going to be an explanation later in the story about them, so if they do seem off, I have a reason for that.  
> Also, the layout of each chapter is basically Bucky's POV, then Steve's POV of the same events, with a lil bit at the end tying them together. Sometimes Steve's POV will be first, etc., it'll all be obvious. And since I'm diving into their thoughts a lot for this, even thought it's the same events, things are going to be shown in different lights, so I think it won't be repetitive. It was fun to write, so I hope it'll be fun to read.  
> That's all I think I need to say right now, so, yeah. Hope you enjoy.

Truth be told, Bucky Barnes died long ago.

Maybe when he became a sniper, there was a bit of James still left in him. Perhaps there was a trace of him left in his soul, something that allowed him to still smile that cocky grin despite the back of a sniper rifle digging into his shoulder.

But it's been years since then. Three, to be exact.

Three years, a birth and a death.

James Buchanan Barnes died, and the Winter Solider was born in his wake.

A bit more darker, a bit more jagged, a bit more soulless. Having over a hundred confirmed kills and being one of the most in-demand assassins does that to one, despite the fact that he's not quite an assassin anymore.

He drops down on the fire escape on his toes, managing to be completely silent on the rusting, rattling metal. The loud wind whipping around the tall brick building does help with the noise.

The lock to the window is a little old and a little sticky, it takes him a few more moments to pick than usual, but he gets it undone. He always does.

Window open, slip inside, thick leather boots coming to fall gently onto worn wooden floorboards.

The Winter Soldier gets his bearings, finds himself in a hall.

Check the missions status, find the sketchbook, then eliminate the target if needed.

Easy as _one, two, three._

 _One_.

The layout of the apartment is the same as the layout as most cheap apartments, and he finds the sole bedroom with ease. The door is shut, and locked, but that's taken care of in a few flicks of a lock pick, one soft twisting of a doorknob.

He opens the door a minuscule crack, and glances inside.

There's a machine whirring in the corner, looking gray and vaguely medical, and not at all threatening, so he doesn't pay it any mind.

Small and nonthreatening, there's a small lump in the bed, residing underneath no less than six blankets. Perfectly still, and he can see a glimpse of a pale, slender hand, resting next to a head of pale, thin, blond hair.

He's asleep.

_Two._

He gently closes the door, turns to go back down the hall. The hall leads to him a small kitchen slash living room combo. Blankets are scattered everywhere, empty mugs of tea grace every flat surface, and there's a desk that's almost completely covered in pencils and markers and papers.

Underneath a few sheets, a thin piece of a cardboard cover is sticking out. He crosses the room easily, sifts through the papers, and in less than a few seconds, the sketchbook is in his hands.

Considering how smoothly the mission went, there's no need to eliminate the target.

Until:

_Three._

He turns around, and standing there is him.

He's even shorter than he expected, he'd be surprised if the man was tall enough to reach his shoulders. He's sickly pale, that's visible even in the sparse light that the moonlight floating through the curtains provides, and bruises lace his wrists, arms, face. His chest rises and falls with a hitch, and an audible wheeze to match.

The Winter Soldier is fairly certain he could snap him with one hand.

Perhaps even the non-metal one.

His hands are fists, and there's a scowl on his face. He speaks first, in between raspy breaths.

“What the hell are you doing in my apartment?”

And, for a moment, the Winder Soldier is too caught up in those piercing blue eyes to remember.

If he were James, Bucky, the man he used to be, those were the kind of eyes that would make him stop in the middle of the street to offer up some cheesy pick up line. The kind of bruises he'd want to trace with his fingers, press soft kisses to in the middle of the night. Shoulders so slender that would fit perfectly tucked under his arm, thin fingers that would fit perfect in between his own.

But he isn't Bucky.

Hasn't been for a long time.

So he narrows his eyes, subconsciously makes himself bigger. Shoulder's rising, chest inflating, chin tilting up. He can be intimidating when he wants, and he wanted, most of the time.

Despite this, the target, the mission, he stood his ground. Even more surprisingly, he stepped a step closer, lifting up a bony finger to aim it at the terrifying assassin that he appeared to not be terrified of.

“I'm going to ask you one more time, what the hell are you doing here?” he demands, in a voice too deep. It seems out of place in his willowy frame.

The Winter Soldier doesn't care about his missions. Even back when he was Bucky, he tried not to give a shit.

But, for some godforsaken reason, he raises up the sketchbook, a silent answer.

The man frowns, eyes darting from the assassin to the sketchbook and back again.

The Winter Soldier isn't sure what he expects. Questioning, maybe. Wonder. Begging. Something along those lines.

That isn't what happens.

“Oh,” the man says. “That.”

He smiles, a tired, joyless smile.

“Take it.”

And then, he turns, and walks away.

 _He walks away_.

And the Winter Soldier isn't quite sure how to react to that, because people are usually too locked up in fear in his presence to walk away, and if they do make any move to go, it's to run. And usually, there's a bullet in between their eyes before they can even take a step.

But this man who looks like a strong breeze can carry him away, with bones like toothpicks and skin like glass, _**he walks away**_.

“Shut the window when you leave,” he says, over his shoulder, “Can't afford to catch pneumonia again.”

The man doesn't look back at him, he just goes down the hall, enters his bedroom. A heartbeat later there's the sound of the door clicking shut, the lock being turned.

The Winter Soldier still stands there by the desk, because this man just _walked away_.

And, more surprisingly, _he let him_.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, as he walks down the hall, he passes up the bedroom completely. The idea of busting the door, firing a gun, cleaning up blood does cross his mind, but he doesn't

He isn't quite sure why.

When the Winter Soldier leaves the tiny Brooklyn apartment, he makes sure to close the curtains of the window behind him. He shuts the window tight, replaces the lock, and climbs down the fire escape.

Once he's lowered into the alley beside the building, and he comes close enough to a streetlight to see, he glances down at the sketchbook.

He flips open the cover.

In plain, tiny handwriting, on the top left corner of the inner cover, is a name.

_Steven G. Rogers_

The Winter Soldier glances up from the sketchbook, to the window he just exited, and maybe if he squints there's the faint outline of someone there. It's gone a second later, and maybe it was just a trick of the light.

Either way, he snaps the book shut.

The Winter Soldier disappears into the shadows, as he always does.

* * *

It's a windy night and Steve Rogers can't sleep, because Steve Rogers can never sleep on windy, rainy nights.

There was maybe a time, back when he was a kid, when the sound of rain would lull him to sleep, when the billowing wind through trees was as comforting as a blanket.

Sometime before 'bad weather' became synonymous with 'hospital bills'.

On cold, windy days like these, he locks all the doors and windows of his apartment, wraps himself in blankets like barricades. He drinks tea that's probably too hot and too sweet, and he goes to bed early.

And he lays in the darkness, listening to the wind, wishing that for once the calamity of anxiety in his mind would _**s t o p.**_

But it doesn't.

The oxygen concentrator in the corner is humming softly, a vague distraction.

The sheets of his bed are itchy and rough, and he's mentally going over how much he'd have to save up to get new ones, when he hears a soft click.

Steve stills, holds his breath, stops that when he can't breathe at all.

He listens.

There's someone at his window – no, there's someone _inside_.

Steve freezes again, anxiety beginning to tug at his chest. His thoughts flit to the pocket knife hidden in the top drawer of his dresser, and he wonders if he'll be fast enough to go grab it, when he hears someone messing with the lock on his door.

Steve shuts his eyes and tries to make his breathing light, tries to fake the ease that comes with being asleep, for most people. The problem is, sleep never came with ease for him, sleep always was something rough and undesirable, and so his face isn't quite as calm as most people have it when they sleep.

Perhaps his face is a bit too scrunched up, and his breathing is a bit too heavy, and his hands are shaking in a way that they wouldn't if he was actually asleep.

But whomever is at the door merely looks in for a moment before leaving, apparently satisfied.

Steve works two jobs and sells art commissions on the side.

He's lives in a shitty one bedroom apartment, and has to go to the hospital so often that the doctors there know him by name and the nurses don't even have to ask what's wrong anymore.

Point is, he's broke.

And he'll be damned before he lets someone steal any of his few belongings.

Steve gets out of bed as silently as he can, tossing off his mountain of blankets (ignoring the sudden chill down his spine, goosebumps on his arms, and really, the air is too damn cold in here). He grabs the pocket knife from his dresser and places it in the pocket of his pajama pants, deciding to use it as a last resort only.

His knuckles are red and cut up already, and most of his skin is black and blue, so what's one more fist fight?

His door always squeaks a little when you open it fast, so he makes sure to open it slow, it's not as if he could push the heavy wooden door fast anyway.

Moving down the hall is easy enough, Steve's been living in the apartment for long enough to know which floorboards squeak and creak, and which don't.

He reaches the edge of the hall in enough time to see a tall figure rooting through the contents on his desk.

Steve frowns, because besides his art supplies and a few projects in process, there isn't anything worth stealing on the desk.

But still, he clenches his hands into fists, and is about to say something when the man turns around.

And he isn't quite what Steve expected.

Because, of course, the last thing he expected was some guy with a mask and scraggly hair, make-up smudged around his eyes like a goddamn raccoon, and dressed in a _leather outfit_ to top it all off.

His arm is metal, it shines in the sparse light, and although Steve should be terrified, _is_ terrified, he doesn't show it.

“What the hell are you doing in my apartment?” he demands.

A moment afterwards, he sees the pistol at his hip. And the other pistol, on his other hip. And the knife strapped to his thigh. And the fact that this guy is built like a tank. And then there's _the fucking metal arm_.

The thing that people don't get about anxiety is that it isn't always anxiety.

Steve isn't the type to chew his nails and tug at his hair.

He's trembling hands and sweaty palms.

But the thing is, Steve is a fighter, too. Most of his life he's been put down (emotionally, physically, take your pick), and although his anxiety is very prominent, he's pretty damn tired of being shoved around, by anxiety, people, or other.

Steve isn't the type to let it lock him up.

He's the type to shove it back down his throat, fight it, and then collapse and burn.

So that's what he does.

He grips his hands into tighter fists, hopes his shaking comes off as rage. He adds a harsh glare to further his point.

The man doesn't do anything, he's simply staring at Steve with eyes that look partially dead.

So Steve takes a step closer, and raises a finger to point at him.

“I'm going to ask you one more time, what the hell are you doing here?”

He allows himself a moment of smug pride when he realizes his voice didn't waver one bit.

After a few more moments of their stare down, the man with the mask lifts up the sketchbook in his hands, a silent explanation. Steve didn't see him holding it before, and he glances at the book before looking back at the man.

That goddamn sketchbook.

“Oh,” he says, “That.”

That sketchbook was always more trouble than it was worth.

That entire situation was more trouble than it was worth, in the end.

That chapter of Steve's life is closed, over and done with, and honestly, he doesn't even know why he still has that damn thing.

He smiles. Tired and joyless.

Because that's how he feels.

After _that_ was over, that was how he was left.

Tired and joyless.

His smile reflects that.

“Take it.”

And then Steve turns, goes back down the hall.

“Shut the window when you leave,” he says, over his shoulder, “Can't afford to catch pneumonia again.”

He walks into his bedroom, shut and locks the door behind him.

Steve is well aware that with the strength that man must be packing, he could bust down the door and have him murdered in seconds. In fact, it seems pretty damn probable.

Steve stands in front of the door, because he wants to look his death head on.

Breathing's a little bit harder, anxiety's a bit heavier, his hands are shaking faster.

There's footsteps, coming down the hall, right in front of his door.

There's a pause.

And then the footsteps continue.

More sounds at the window (was that the curtains sliding shut?), before it's slammed down, there's a fumbling that could maybe be the lock being replaced.

And then there's nothing.

Steve waits a moment before hesitantly stepping out of his room, and going down to the window at the end of the hall. He brushes the curtains aside, just enough so he can look down into the alley outside his window.

Steve can see him better outside, under the light of a dim streetlight. His hair is brown, blocking his face since his head is tilted down, and his arms even more vibrant outside.

He has the sketchbook open, scanning the first page.

A moment later, he glances upwards, to the window. His eyes widen quizzically, as if he could actually see past the curtains, see Steve.

Steve's breath catches in his throat. He steps backwards, and continues to do so until he's positive he's out of sight.

He turns on his heels, rushes back to his bedroom as fast as his legs can carry him, and slams the door shut in his wake. He makes sure to lock it, and only then does he let the anxiety get to him.

Steve backs up, back pressing into the door, and he slides down into a sitting position.

Powering through the anxiety always makes it worse later.

And, oh _god_ , he can't breathe.

* * *

While the Fallen Captain sits on his bedroom floor and struggles to exist, the Winter Soldier marches down the alley, down the street.

He can't stop thinking of him, and vice versa.

And neither of them like it.

Because as long as he thinks of him, the more ways he could have _died_ float into his mind, the longer this panic attack is going to be.

And he doesn't allow himself to think of his missions, and if he keeps on thinking of the stick thin man in the apartment he might allow himself to think of other things, more human things, and there is no way that the Winter Soldier is going to defrost again. The only other option is going back and finishing the mission like he should have, but he doesn't let himself think of that either.

Despite their reservations, the two think of each other for the rest of the night.

Not all of it is a panic attack.

Not all of it is murderous.

Both ways, not all of it is bad.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah. This is going to be a chapter story (currently have five down, but it's going to be longer than that). I hope to have at least one update each week, but it may occasionally be every two weeks if things get busy. But hopefully it won't come to that!  
> So, yep! Tell me what you think, if you want me to continue, all that good stuff!


	2. The Soldier and Steven Rogers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve moves to the end of the counter, the part where people wait for their drinks to be served, and he can't help but notice he's standing rather close to the table with the man with the baseball cap, who may or may not be his robber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this a few days early, because I want to shift to posting on Fridays. I think that'll be easier.  
> Again, hope you like it.

 Cafe Shield is something akin to a cliché.

The insides are decorated in cool grays and soft browns, vintage memorabilia graces the walls, and the workers behind the counter are either peppy as hell (Phil and Skye, who worked weekdays and weekends, respectively) or never smile at all (Melinda and Ward, who shared their shifts with Phil and Skye, respectively).

Your general, run of the mill coffee shop.

The coffee is always a bit bitter and the tea the slightest bit under steeped, but it's only a two block walk from his apartment, and so Steve likes it there.

It's a Saturday afternoon, one week after the break in. He had dipped into his savings for new sheets, and bought all new locks to his apartment.

Saturday means Skye and Ward are working, and although they can't make as mean a cup of tea as Phil, Skye does always add a bit of lavender and vanilla in, free of charge, so no worries.

The line is fairly nonexistent, but the place is fairly crowded. There's a couple sitting over on a sofa, a group of teens studying by the larger table in the corner, a group of three at another table, and there's a rather scruffy looking man hunched over a mug of something.

Steve notices him the second he walks in. He has to force himself to take a deep breath, because breathing is important after all (the oxygen tank he's rolling after him, and the tubes wrapped around his ears, to his nose, are a reminder of just how important breathing is).

Ultimately, he does square his shoulders and moves into the coffee shop, because it is his coffee shop, in the sense that he's the one who comes by every few days, he's the one who he's pretty sure that Phil has something of a crush on, he's the one who gets an automatic friends-and-family discount even though he's never seen any of the baristas outside of the cafe.

Short and simple, the cafe is _his_ ground, and he won't back down on it.

Not to mention it's a public place, plenty of witnesses, security cameras hanging in the corners.

So, if the man who's has a striking resemblance to the man who broke into his house a week ago tries anything, Steve's pretty positive nothing serious would go down.

Besides. The man came just for the sketchbook, and that could only mean one thing, and if it did, in fact, meant that one thing, then Steve was fairly certain that he wouldn't have to expect anything else from the guy.

He steps up to the counter and smiles at Skye, nods at Ward.

“Hey,” he greets. He gets a nod back from Ward, who's hovering over the blender, making some ice drink. Skye waves at him as she bounds to the counter, standing in front of the cash register.

“Earl Grey latte?” Skye asks, but she doesn't really have to, because Steve gets the same thing every time he comes.

“Yes,” Steve answers, although he doesn't really have to, because Skye's already punched his order in.

“Extra vanilla, extra lavender?”

“Yep.”

“Anything else?”

Steve usually doesn't get anything else, because the tea is relatively cheap, but most of the other things aren't. However, he's already blown his sheet-savings on new locks, so he figures he may as well use the rest of that money to buy him something nice, and start saving up again from scratch.

“Yeah, actually,” he says, and he tilts his head slightly as he glances through the glass, over the rows of pastries and sandwiches.

“One of those, please,” he says as he points to some kind of cupcake that's decorated in pink icing, garnished with strawberry slices. He opts to not say it's name out loud, because for some reason he doesn't want Skye, Ward, or the man who may or may not be his robber to overhear him saying 'Decadent Strawberry Enchant With Pink-alicious Icing'. Skye was the one who named it, probably.

“Okie-dokie,” Skye says, as she punches the rest of the order into the machine, and Steve fishes money from out of his pocket. “We'll have it all ready for you in a minute, Steve.”

“Thanks, Skye,” he says, once he's done paying.

“No prob,” she says, before darting away from the counter to go prep his drink.

Steve moves to the end of the counter, the part where people wait for their drinks to be served, and he can't help but notice he's standing rather close to the table with the man with the baseball cap, who may or may not be his robber.

“Did Stark like the sketchbook?” Steve starts, and he isn't quite sure why he's even speaking.

Best case senario, this guy isn't him, and he simply thinks Steve's crazy. Worst case, he _is_ him, finds him a threat, drags him to the alley out back and beats the shit out of him, or worse.

And neither of them sounds nice.

But then there's the median.

He _is_ the guy, and he doesn't hurt Steve.

And maybe Steve get's some answers.

So that's why he speaks.

The guy looks up from his mug, and for a moment there's confusion on his face, and Steve thinks he has the wrong guy. However, those brown-or-grey-or-blue-or-hazel eyes (Steve can't really tell), seem a bit too damn familiar to just pass up.

They look a bit different without the surrounding raccoon paint, but it's definitely him.

The man doesn't speak, so Steve turns back to face the counter, watching Skye and Ward dart around, fulfilling orders and making drinks (...and Skye just spilled some very pink icing on Ward's very black shirt, and, oh god, she's _rubbing_ it, doesn't she know that just makes stains worse? Ward frowns, takes the towel and the matter into his own hands, and Steve doesn't see what happens after because:)

“I don't know.”

The man's voice is lighter that Steve expected it to be, but in pitch only. His tone is not exactly angry, per se, but definitely weighed down. Something tired in it, like he's got the kind of sleepiness that caffeine and naps can't fix.

He does, but Steve doesn't know that.

“Stark's a pretty emotive guy, you'd know if he was happy about it,” Steve replies. He tries to fight the urge to glance over at the guy, if only for seeming like he doesn't really care about the conversation.

He does, _but he isn't sure why_.

“I didn't give the book to Stark,” the man says, and Steve has a split second of confusion, because who besides Stark would want that damn thing? The man continues. “I gave it to his assistant. Never made contact with Stark himself.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Okay.”

He does give in, he does glance over at the man, who's staring up at him with wide eyes.

“Don't you want to know why?” he asks.

Steve smiles, an echo of the same smile he smiled last night.

“Nope. I already know.”

“Alright,” the man replies. He turns back to his mug.

Skye comes in just as their conversation closes out, and she sets down a small box with his cupcake, and a plastic cup with his latte. “There you go, Steve!”

“Thanks,” he says, and Skye scurries off to deal with more customers.

“Steve,” the man says, “Hmm.”

Steve grabs his items off of the counter, and turns to the man.

“Something interesting about my name?”

“Sketchbook said your name was Steven,” he replies, “Steve's more fitting. You don't look like a Steven.”

“And what's your name?”

The man grins, takes a sip of his hot cocoa.

“Don't have one,” he replies.

Steve resists the urge to roll his eyes. He quirks an eyebrow instead.

“Bet your drivers license says differently,” he replies.

“Maybe,” the man says, “But you're not going to get your hands on my drivers license.”

“We'll see about that,” Steve says, as he heads to the door of the cafe.

“Are you threatening to steal my drivers license?” the man calls after him.

“You did steal my sketchbook,” Steve calls back.

With that, he leaves the cafe.

He's only a little confused at what just happened.

* * *

Because even assassins have downtime.

Although, as he thinks over his cup of hot cocoa, he's not quite sure if that term even applies.

He hasn't preformed an actual assassination in over a year now (Date: Saturday, November 23rd, 2013. Mission status: Success.).

Oh, he'd been offered missions. Plenty. The underground world filled with spies, corrupt positions and businessmen, general shady people, they all knew his name, knew his work, and they wanted him.

But still, it had been over a year.

Lately he's been sticking to simpler jobs, theft, gathering info, stealing sketchbooks. No killing, unless if things went sour, and that was only if things went _really_ sour.

Somewhere halfway through his hot cocoa, it occurs to him that the term 'assassin' may not be fitting anymore, considering he hasn't actually assassinated in a long while.

He can either go out, get hired, kill someone, or toss the label into the big pile of names and identities he's ditched before.

And he's leaning towards the latter.

Maybe it'd be nice to get out. Live like actual people do.

And it's kind of a funny thought, imagining himself with a two floor house and a picket fence and a dog, watching reality TV at three a.m., going to some office job at seven. It makes him want to laugh, even though he hasn't laughed for almost as long as he hasn't been called Bucky.

The bells chime over the door, and he glances up. More out of instinct than curiosity, a lifetimes worth of being in dangerous situations had trained him to keep his senses sharp.

And in walks a Steven Rogers.

Clad in a hoodie at least two times too big, and rolling a oxygen tank after him. The tubes hooked over his ears make his glasses sit at a slightly awkward angle, but he doesn't seem to care.

The soldier finds himself staring for just a moment, before ducking his head down so he couldn't be recognized. All he really has going for a disguise at the moment is a baseball cap and a hoodie, but if he keeps to himself, maybe he won't be noticed.

There's just a twinge of disappointment tied to that idea.

With the life he's leading, being noticed is a _bad_ thing, so he can't quite figure it out why he'd want to be noticed now.

But, although being noticed by the tiny blond does sound like a good idea in theory, in practice it could possibly lead to him being arrested for breaking and entering, so maybe it isn't such a good idea.

So he tilts his head down, takes another sip of his hot cocoa, and goes back to musing over names and identities while watching Steven Rogers out of the corner of his eye.

And maybe Steven Rogers is proof that the term 'assassin' doesn't apply. Had he been placed in the same situation a year, a year and a half ago, the soldier would have did what he did when any mission was threatened by a witness: eliminate the threat.

But instead Steven Rogers was here, getting tea and a cupcake, apparently. Alive and breathing (albeit with the aid of machinery, but that doesn't count, because that particular thing isn't the soldier's fault).

Steven Rogers crosses the room, stands by the corner of the counter where people wait for their food. He drums his fingers on the counter.

After a moment, without even looking at him, he speaks.

“Did Stark like the sketchbook?”

The soldier glances up from his drink. His eyes narrow in confusion for just a moment, briefly wondering how to answer. Steven Rogers stares at him for a few moments, before turning back to the coffee bar.

Steven Rogers isn't looking at him, he's still watching the two baristas do their thing, almost as if he specifically doesn't want to look at him.

“I don't know,” the soldier settles on, because it is, in fact, the truth. He dropped off the package to a Pepper Potts, the entire job was orchestrated through her. He never did see Tony Stark face to face during the mission.

“Stark's a pretty emotive guy, you'd know if he was happy about it.”

“I didn't give the book to Stark,” he says, and he can see Steven Rogers frown, for a split second, so he clarifies. “I gave it to his assistant. Never made contact with Stark himself.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The soldier narrows his eyes, studies the man.

He looks even paler in the light of day, sickly white skin contrasting sharply with both the deep navy of his hoodie, and the bright blue of his eyes. His hair is an utter mess, his shoulder's are slumped, and there are heavy purple bags underneath his eyes. He looks tired.

He looks utterly and completely tired.

And the soldier doesn't quite want their conversation to end, for some godforsaken reason.

So.

“Don't you want to know why?” He's grasping at straws, and he knows this. He doesn't even know why Stark wanted the book, but he still dangles the answer in the air, hoping for another line or comment.

Steven Rogers smiles, thin pink lips pressing together, him glancing away for just a second.

The soldier thinks that smiles are supposed to equal joy (which is maybe why he himself doesn't smile, he just grins or smirks or smolders, and never _smiles_ ). But Steven Rogers smiles, and it doesn't look at all happy.

“Nope. I already know.”

“Alright.” And because he doesn't quite know how to continue the conversation to there, he returns back to his hot cocoa, and tries not to look back up.

The female barista rushes up to the counter.

“There you go, Steve!” she says, voice bright, before bounding off to go back to manning the cash register.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Steve,” the soldier muses aloud, thinking it over. “Hmm.”

Steven does seem a bit formal despite the fact that it's only a one letter difference, and Steven Rogers seems too large a name to constantly rest on those bony shoulders of his.

Steve.

It fits him.

It fits him nicely.

“Something interesting about my name?” Steve-not-Steven says, after he gathers his items. One hand still on the handle of the cart for his oxygen tank, one hand holding his tea, cupcake box tucked under his arm.

“Sketchbook said your name was Steven,” the soldier says, “Steve's more fitting. You don't look like a Steven.”

Steve nods, in agreement.

“And what's your name?” he asks, and it sounds light, but oh, does the soldier know that it's a loaded question. He can't quite tell if this conversation is just that, or if it's something akin to flirtation, or something akin to two enemies sizing each other up. Revealing his name isn't just revealing his name in this context, it's something more. A name, a promise of seeing each other again, or a warning.

Whatever it is, and even if he wants to tell Steve his name, he doesn't have a name to tell. Not one that's accurate, anyway. James and Bucky and Barnes are long out of use. And The Winter Soldier is a bit dramatic, and he's been considering dropping that mantle anyway.

He grins (not a smile, a grin), and takes a sip of his hot cocoa.

“Don't have one,” he answers.

Steve quirks an eyebrow up.

“Bet your drivers license says differently,” he replies, dryly.

“Maybe,” the soldier says. His drivers license does, in fact, say differently, but Steve doesn't need to know that. “But you're not going to get your hands on my drivers license.”

And maybe if you look a little deeper, it's a bit of a challenge.

But only if you squint.

And maybe Steve's squinting.

He turns, and heads to the door of the cafe, that's only just a few feet away.

“We'll see about that,” he says.

“Are you threatening to steal my drivers license?” the soldier asks, a tint of smugness there, because he knows that's exactly what Steve-not-Steven's planning on doing. Unless if he was one to carelessly toss about promises of theft, but he didn't quite seem that type.

“You did steal my sketchbook,” Steve replies.

And then he leaves, the bells over the door chiming in his wake.

The soldier takes his mug in his hands again, and he very nearly smiles.

He takes a sip, instead.

* * *

Steve walks back to his apartment, Earl Gray latte in hand.

The soldier asks for another hot cocoa, to go.

Steve thinks of theft.

The soldier thinks of labels.

It wouldn't be the first time Steve's pick pocketed. So, to hell with it, next time he sees the man with no name, he's going to steal his wallet.

The soldier, feels somewhat more comfortable with who he is and who he isn't after the conversation with Steve-not-Steven. He mentally puts 'assassin' in a box in the back of his mind, tucking it next to 'James' and 'Bucky' and 'hero'. Although, the dust on 'Bucky' doesn't seem quite as thick as it used to be.


	3. Alley Fights and Pickpocketing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Y'know, you don't look like the kind of guy to save people.”  
> “And you don't look like the kind of guy who gets into alley fights.”

The soldier's landlady is an nice woman, with a smile that never quite reaches her eyes, and a English accent that occasionally slips into something more like New York dialect. She told him once that she's been living there since her twenties, even though she doesn't seem a day out of her twenties.

She calls him James, and he lets her.

Her name is Miss Carter, nothing more, nothing less. And she always seems to be in the foyer of the building.

He makes his way down the stairs of the building, before coming to the landing.

“Going out, James?” she asks, before his feet even hit the floor, after stepping off the last step.

“Yes, miss,” he says, because despite his rough life, rougher upbringing, he does pride himself on being polite enough to use sirs and misses and ma'ams.

“Then get your ass back upstairs and put an actual coat on.”

He sighs.

“What's wrong with this one?”

She frowns at him.

“That thing is paper thin and won't do anything to help with the cold. It's below freezing out there.”

He frowns, because, honestly, he's a super assassin, and he doesn't have to follow anyone's orders but his own.

And no less than two minutes, he comes down with a thicker jacket.

Because he does have a soft spot for Peggy.

Nothing romantic, of course, and they were only considered friends in the very loosest terms. But loose terms are still terms, he supposes, so they're friends.

And so he's wearing a thicker jacket.

Miss Carter, from where's she sitting behind the front desk, glances up from the papers in her hand. The soldier holds his arms out wide, showcasing his new apparel.

“Better?”

“A bit,” she says, eyes narrowed in scrutiny.

“Good enough for me,” he replies, “See you later.”

Peggy turns back to her papers.

“Bye, James,” she says, and with that, he leaves.

As soon as he steps out of the building he's grateful for the thicker jacket, but there's no way he's going to tell Peggy that.

His plans are a bit loose for the day, he does have to make a stop at the store, and then there's possibly a cryptic meeting at midnight (midnight, people always set their meeting with him for midnight. As if it's cryptic and ominous anymore. At this point, it's just cliché, and a bit annoying, to be frank). Something about a man named Zola who wants a specific USB plug. Should be an easy enough job, and one he can grossly overprice without the customer being the wiser.

However, first things first, the grocery store.

The snow crunches under his feet as he walks down the city sidewalk, which isn't as crowded as it usually is. The traffic to his left is thicker, more people opting to ride in cars, out of the biting, windy day.

There's a grocery store ten blocks away from his apartment, one of those overpriced, healthy and organic places, that he only goes to because of it's closeness. By the time he's there, his fingers in his non-metal hand are numb, and the sensors in his metal arm are giving him more than a little discomfort.

“ _Fuck you!_ ”

There's the sound of someones fist connecting with someones nose.

Generally, when it isn't work related, the soldier tries to stay out of fights.

Someone just got slammed against an alley wall.

But that 'fuck you' did sound fairly familiar.

The soldier glances down into the alley, and finds a blur of blond and white rushing at a much larger man.

Steve, apparently.

And he just _tackled_ the guy.

Well, attempted to. Steve's too tiny to make much impact, so he winds up only latching onto the guys back, wrapping his arms around his neck in a choke hold.

The man begins to turn an alarming shade of blue, and the soldier's about to intervene, when the man grabs onto Steve's arms and pries them off. He manages to loosen the smaller man's hold, and tosses him to the concrete, and turns to him.

“You're going to fucking pay for that,” he spits out.

The soldier saunters into the alley.

“You may want to rethink that,” he says.

The man turns his head. The soldier grins, and grabs the knife he has concealed in his jacket. He makes sure to grip it with the metal fist, a bit more threatening, he thinks.

The man frowns in consideration.

By this time, Steve's scrambled to his feet.

“Get the fuck out of here,” he says.

The man scowls, and he's reached the conclusion that maybe he can't take both the soldier and Steve. So he turns and exits.

“If I ever see you again, I will rip your lungs out and stuff them down your throat,” Steve growls at him, as he goes.

“Aren't you an angry one?” The soldier comments, once the man is gone. He slips his knife back into his jacket pocket.

Steve's got bloody knuckles, and a black eye to match. His nose is bleeding, and the wheezing coming from his lungs is loud and harsh.

“Are you alright?” the soldier asks, moving closer, eyes narrowed as he looks Steve up and down, searching for any serious injuries.

“I'm fine,” Steve replies, although he doesn't sound like it, and he doesn't look like it either. The soldier decides not to press it. “Y'know, you don't look like the kind of guy to save people.”

“And you don't look like the kind of guy who gets into alley fights.”

Steve smiles wide, and maybe it's sarcastic, or maybe it's prideful.

“You don't know me that well,” he says, before glancing down at the ground, “Now. Oxygen tank was kicked somewhere, and I lost my glasses.”

Steve takes a step forwards, eyes still squinting around the alley, when one of his feet accidentally gets stuck under a piece of tubing, connected to his oxygen tank.

He trips.

And he lands on the soldier.

The soldier, caught a bit off guard, wraps an arm around Steve's waist on instinct to steady him, but he's still thrown off balance. The two crash to the ground with a thud, Steve landing on top of him.

Steve turns a bright shade of red, hands scrambling across the soldier's chest as he tries to gather his balance and push himself up.

“O-oh my god, I'm s-so sorry,” he stutters out.

The soldier, himself turning red by the tiny blond's rather vivid movements on top of him, realizes a moment later that the only reason Steve couldn't get up was because he still had his arm around him.

“Sorry,” he says, his own voice coming out awkward, as he removes his arm.

Steve scrambles to his feet, still red, and holds out a hand to help him up.

He takes it, but makes sure not to put too much weight on the smaller man (because he's pretty sure that those stick-thin arms of his wouldn't be able to hold his weight without breaking).

“At least you found your oxygen thing,” he says, glancing down at the tubing Steve had tripped over.

“Heh, yeah,” Steve says, kneeling down to grab the tube. He picks it up, and scowls at it a moment later. “There's a tear in it. Shit.”

“Are you going to have to buy another one now?”

“I have some extras at home,” Steve says, as he goes to grab his oxygen tank. His glasses are sitting on the ground beside it, a bit dirty and smudged, but no worse for wear. “It just means I'm going to walk home without being able to use my tank.”

The soldier's eyes widen slightly.

“Is... don't you need that thing to breathe? Like, holy shit, do you need me to call an ambulance or something?”

Steve shakes his head.

“No. I can breathe without it, it's just a lot harder. My home is only a couple blocks from here, I should be able to make it.”

“Breathing is pretty important, you know,” the soldier says.

Steve slides his glasses on.

“Ha ha,” he says, sarcastically. “I know that better than you do.”

He wraps the torn tubing around the handle of his oxygen cart, and begins walking down the alley.

“I'll be fine. I have my inhaler if things don't work out, and if I'm feeling really bad I'll take a breathing treatment at home.”

The soldier pauses for a moment, before walking quickly to catch up with Steve.

“I'll walk with you,” he says, “In case if anything goes wrong.”

Steve glances up at him from the corner of his eye, thinking for a brief moment, before smiling.

“Okay.”

The soldier can't help but think that how two months ago, he was breaking and entering into a nameless man's apartment, vaguely considering killing him on top of it.

And now, he was walking that man home to make sure he made it there okay.

Maybe he'd gone soft, but as the soldier looked over at Steve, he didn't feel like that was a bad thing.

Maybe even a good thing.

“So,” Steve says, a moment into their walk, “You break into any other apartments lately?”

“Nope,” the soldier replies, and it was, in fact, the truth. He hadn't broken into any homes since Steve's, he hadn't even done any jobs since Steve. Not for any moral reason, but the pay that he'd gotten from that sketchbook was more than enough to hold him over for the rest of the year. He was only doing missions now to save up some money, and even then he was only taking the interesting ones. “You threaten any masked intruders lately?”

“Just you,” Steve says, “For the masked intruders part, anyway.”

“So you've threatened other people?” the soldier asked, more than a little intrigued. Steve looks like a pillow hitting him would shatter him, he doesn't seem the type to risk his health further by getting into fights.

But he is, apparently.

“Yep. Guy in the alley? One of 'em.”

“What did he do? To make you mad, I mean.”

“He was talking during a movie,” Steve says, with a lopsided grin that doesn't seem as happy as he tries to make it. It was faintly obvious that talking during a movie wasn't the cause, but the soldier doesn't press it.

“Must have been a hell of a movie,” he says, instead.

“Something like that.”

The sidewalks of Brooklyn are biting cold, the heavy wind dancing through the air doesn't help. Steve is bundled up to the nines, leather jacket, thick scarf looped around his neck, and no less than two sweaters on.

Despite that, he is still shaking slightly as the two make their way down streets and alleys.

So the soldier slips off his thick coat, and pauses for a moment to drape it over Steve's shoulders.

Steve doesn't say a thing in protest, he merely quirks an eyebrow up at him.

“You look cold,” the soldier says.

They resume walking.

“Thank you.”

* * *

Honestly, he didn't even plan on seeing the man with the metal arm that day.

Steve's plans were to go see a movie, maybe grab a bite at the cafe, and then go home and work on some art commissions.

“ _Fuck you!_ ”

The fist to the nose was the first main indicator that things weren't really going to plan.

Of course, things had started out according to the plan. Then the man a few rows ahead of him started talking, which, Steve could handle talking. But then came the homophobic comments at the gay couple on screen, which Steve didn't tolerate.

Things escalated.

And, ultimately, it escalated into a fight in the alley alongside the theater.

The man slams him into the brick wall, and stars dance about in Steve's mind for a heartbeat. He has to blink several times to clear the blackness edging into his vision.

Steve fakes going limp for a split second, making the man feel enough confidence to loosen his grip. Steve shoves him off the second the hands on his arms go slack.

He isn't strong and he isn't big, but Steve _is_ small and quick. He darts around the man, and jumps, latching onto the man's back and putting him in a choke hold.

Steve glances up for a second, hearing something at the edge of the alley, and curiously enough, the man with the metal arm is there.

The distraction makes his arm loosen, and the man grips at him and tosses him off.

Steve feels the wind getting knocked out of his chest as he hits the rough, dirty concrete. He's going to be sore  _ as fuck _ tomorrow.

“You're going to fucking pay for that,” the man growls down at him.

Before he can do anything, however, the metal armed man saunters into the alley.

“You may want to rethink that,” he says. From his spot on the ground, Steve can't really tell if he's smirking or not, but the air of confidence around him is undeniable. He's holding onto a surprisingly large knife with his metal hand.

Steve scrambles to his feet, and shoves dirty snow off of his jacket.

“Get the fuck out of here,” he says.

And the man does. It irritates Steve more than he'd admit that he was just (technically) rescued instead of finishing the fight himself, but he decides not to comment.

“If I ever see you again, I will rip your lungs out and stuff them down your throat,” Steve growls at the man, and it's nothing short of a miracle that the guy doesn't come back. Steve kind of wishes he would, if just to give him another black eye.

He knows that it'd more likely end up with himself getting another black eye, but the sentiment is there, all the same.

“Aren't you an angry one?” the metal armed man comments, having stepped closer. He slips his knife back into his jacket pocket. “Are you alright?”

Steve glances down at himself. He's covered in dirt and snow and blood, not all of which is his own. His knuckles are bloody and his palms are scratched up to hell, and even though he can't see it, he's pretty sure his nose is bleeding.

“I'm fine,” he says, because by his standards, this is fine. Last couple of fights, he left with nothing short of broken ribs and fingers, this was getting off easy.

Roughly half of his doctors visits are from injuries from the fights he seems to get into every other day, and Steve knows that at his monthly check-up next week, his doctor is going to have a hell of a lot to say about the bruises and cuts lacing his skin.

To make sure that he doesn't press with his questions, or worse, insist he takes him to the hospital, Steve speaks, switching the subject easily.

“Y'know, you don't look like the kind of guy to save people.”

“And you don't look like the kind of guy who gets into alley fights.”

Steve smiles.

Because, they've met exactly two times prior, and this man is already assuming things about him.

Everyone assumes things about him.

That because he's stick thin and as healthy as a dying bird, he's the type to sit in bed and take his meds on time.

Steve isn't quite rest and alarms for medication.

He's more broken knuckles and belated painkillers.

So he smiles, wide, sarcastically, bright.

Because _oh_ , if this guy is going to get to know him, he's got a whole fucking lot to learn.

“You don't know me that well,” is all Steve says, before glancing down at the ground, “Now. Oxygen tank was kicked somewhere, and I lost my glasses.”

Generally Steve can see alright without his glasses, enough to maneuver about without too many issues.

But his glasses are black, the alley is dark, and the dirt, snow, concrete, they muddle together in swirls of shared colors, making it a bit hard to discern what's what.

Steve takes a step forward, and he doesn't even notice that his foot's caught under some tubing until he trips and falls forward, limbs flailing.

The man catches him, looping an arm around his waist, but the two are still thrown off balance, hitting the pavement.

Steve lands on top of the man heavily, ad his face goes bright red in an instant.

He's had a bit of experience with people before. There's been a handful of one night stands, and there was that one drunken night with Sam that neither of them really talked about. He's had his fair share of closet make out sessions, and late night visits from girls and guys he's met.

Steve, although appearance may suggest otherwise, is fairly experienced.

But still, one doesn't just fall on top of a guy like _him_ and come out unfazed.

So, Steve turns bright red, and attempts to get up.

A sudden thought hits him in the midst of his panic.

“O-oh my god, I'm s-so sorry,” he stutters out, and it's half an apology, half a distraction.

One of his hands slip underneath the man's jacket, he grabs what he needs, and the man is none the wiser.

The man seems to realize that Steve isn't going anywhere with his arm still around him.

“Sorry,” he says, him also blushing faintly (and, in Steve's opinion, the soft red tinting those stubbly cheeks is positively enrapturing).

The man lets him go, and Steve scrambles to his feet. He runs his hands over his thighs, making it look like a nervous tick, or brushing off dirt, as he slips the item he filched into his pocket.

He holds a hand out to help the man up, and fights off the urge to smile at how the man doesn't even seem to realize his jacket is just a little bit lighter.

“At least you found your oxygen thing,” the man says, head tilted down to the tubes that Steve just tripped over.

“Heh, yeah,” Steve says. He kneels down to grab the tubes, checking them over to make sure they're alright. If any dust or snow got into them, he wouldn't be able to use them until he cleaned them out, which was always a long process.

The tubes turn out to be mostly clear, but there's a small slit up the side of it. Steve frowns down, eyes narrowing as he studies it, sees if it's something he can patch up at all.

“There's a tear in it. Shit.”

“Are you going to have to buy another one now?” the man asks.

“I have some extras at home. It just means I'm going to walk home without being able to use my tank.”

Steve grabs his oxygen tank, and his glasses sitting next to it, and stands.

When he glances back up at the metal armed man, he's staring at him through wide eyes.

“Is... don't you need that thing to breathe? Like, holy shit, do you need me to call an ambulance or something?”

Steve shakes his head.

While there might be a minor chance that things on the walk home will go bad, and he will wind up in the hospital, he doesn't want to go if he doesn't have to.

Steve's pretty damn sick of hospitals.

“No. I can breathe without it, it's just a lot harder,” he explains, as he cleans off his glasses, “My home is only a couple blocks from here, I should be able to make it.”

“Breathing is pretty important, you know,” the man says.

Steve slides his glasses on, and tries not to think about the time when he could walk around without an oxygen cart.

Before there was an oxygen concentrator in the corner of every room of his apartment.

Before forgetting his inhaler was a huge deal.

Before his lungs were shit.

“Ha ha,” he says, sarcastically. Perhaps if he had met this man at another point in his life, _before,_ things would be different. Maybe he'd be less sarcastic and cynical, more flirtatious and bright. Like his old self.

But Steve isn't his old self.

He's wheezing lungs and sarcastic quips now.

“I know that better than you do,” he says, because he does. The man in front of him looks in peak condition, and Steve has asthma attacks multiple times a week. Then there's the scoliosis, eye issues, heart issues, occasional pneumonia. Steve's willing to bet that he's been sick more times than this man has broken into apartments.

He does know breathing's importance.

He wraps the torn tubes around the handle of his oxygen cart, and begins walking down the alley, out towards the sidewalk.

“I'll be fine,” he says as he goes, “I have my inhaler if things don't work out, and if I'm feeling really bad I can take a breathing treatment at home.”  
A few seconds later, there's the sounds of footsteps behind him, and the man is at his side.

“I'll walk with you,” he says, “In case if anything goes wrong.”

Steve glances up at him, briefly wondering what this mans deal was.

He broke into his apartment two months ago, and now he's walking him home.

But Steve doesn't really mind, if he's honest with himself.

So, Steve smiles at him.

“Okay.”

Steve hasn't seen him in two months, and he may possibly not see him for another two after this. So, though not talking will probably make them walk faster, Steve strikes up a conversation anyway.

"So, you broke into any other apartments lately?"

"Nope," the man answers, and Steve can't tell if that's surprising or not. "You threaten any masked intruders lately?"

"Just you. For the masked intruders part, anyway," Steve replies.

"So you've threatened other people?" the man asks, obviously interested.

"Yep. Guy in the alley? One of 'em," Steve answers.

"What did he do? To make you mad, I mean."

Steve doesn't really feel like descending into a rant over homophobia, nor getting riled up again. So he decides to go with a simpler answer.

"He was talking during a movie," he says, with a grin, and he doesn't really care if that makes him sound like a petty asshole.

The man doesn't seem to think so, but he doesn't really seem to believing it.

"Must have been a hell of a movie," he says, and Steve decides that he likes him.

He knows when he's lying, and he lets him lie anyway. If it had been Sam or Clint or Nat, they'd have pressed the issue, got him talking.

This guy didn't.

Steve likes that.

"Something like that," he says.

They fall back into silence.

It's below freezing, and Steve doesn't really notice that he's shaking. It happens so often, it's generally out of mind.

Asthma medication, fevers, heart racing, insomnia.

He's got plenty of reasons to shake, so half the time he is, and he doesn't even notice it anymore.

But he does notice when the man slips off his coat, and drapes it over his shoulders.

Steve quirks an eyebrow up in questioning.

"You look cold," the man says, and that's all he offers in explanation before they continue walking again.

The coat is thick and soft, still warm from the mans heat, even in the sleeve where his metal arm was.

The coat smells like burnt gunpowder and peppermint, and it's a really nice scent to be enraptured in.

"Thank you," Steve says, and he means it.

* * *

The soldier doesn't walk Steve inside. Steve gives him back his coat, and then he continues on his trek to the grocery store.

Steve shuffles into his apartment building, and takes the elevator up to his floor. Once he reaches his apartment, he shuffles over to his sofa, and sits down.

The soldier gets the usual things. Milk, eggs, ramen, coffee, tea. He's got his basket full, and the checkout line doesn't seem long at all.

Steve slips his hand into his jacket, and pulls out a thin, faded, blue wallet. There's no credit cards, just a couple twenties in it. No photos, no movie ticket stubs, no receipts.

But there's a driver's license.

The line does progress quickly, and soon it's time to pay for his food. The soldier fishes a hand into his jacket pocket to grab his wallet.

Steve allows his fingers to brush over the DMV picture of the man. His hair is shorter there, and he's _smiling_.

The soldier's search comes up empty.

Steve reads the name.

The soldier deduces what happened in a heartbeat, grins and offers the cashier an apology as he leaves his stuff behind.

James B. Barnes.

It fits him, Steve thinks.

He's going to have to pay another visit to Steven Rogers, the soldier thinks.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a more lighthearted chapter, but believe me, the angst is going to return in full force soon B)  
> Let me know what you think~


	4. Asthma, Anxiety, Chamomile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The soldier is about to say something, about to leave, about to just go and never come back because he's obviously just fucking things up here, when Steve speaks.  
> “A-asthma meds,” he stutters out, voice weak and dry, “G-general anxiety, asthma meds make it worse, I-I don't like to be caught off g-guard.”  
> Anxiety.

 Generally Steve can't force himself to fall asleep until two a.m. or later, but that night he managed to go to sleep at midnight.

He did wind up having to take a breathing treatment, and the medicine was still doing a toll on his system when he woke up from restless sleep about an hour later.

Asthma meds always make him shaky. His heart is pounding, his hands are trembling, and his thoughts are flitting all over the place, and Steve knows there is absolutely no way he is going to get any sleep anytime soon.

He needs tea.

Steve gets up carefully, and grabs his glasses off of the nightstand, pushing them up on his nose as he pushes himself to his feet.

He grabs a hoodie that's on the floor but doesn't look too dirty, and slips it on over his pajamas. The heating in his apartment is shit, and he needs all the warmth he can get.

Steve shuffles to his kitchen living room combo, and goes over to the counter. He sets up his kettle on the stove, before turning to his cabinet.

It's sparse, but there's a couple boxes of a few different types of tea, and he can't quite decide what he wants.

"I'm going to need my wallet back, you know."

And Steve all but jumps out of his skin.

He whips around, and his heart is pumping even more if possible. The shaking in his hands spreads up to his shoulders, soon he's shuddering all over, and his throat feels as dry as a desert. His eyes go wide, and despite the asthma meds still in his system, it feels as if all of the air was punched right out of his lungs.

The man with the metal arm, James, he's sitting on Steve's ratty old recliner, looking perfectly at ease.

The major side effect of asthma medication is general shakiness. Heart racing, blood pumping, trembling hands.

It puts Steve on edge.

The effects were basically non existent with his oxygen tank, his inhaler was a bit bad, but not really, but the breathing treatments were the worst with it.

And while if this were any other night, he might have been fine and would have managed to corral his anxiety in, the effects of the breathing treatment just tipped him over.

Steve doesn't say anything, he _can't_ say anything, he simply stares at James with wide blue eyes.

James frowns, and stands up from his chair. Steve flinches slightly, shoulders hunching forward, him caving in on himself.

James freezes.

“I'm sorry if I scared you,” he says, and the flash of regret on his face shows that he means it.

Steve blinks several times.

And, for a few moments, there's nothing but the sound of an oxygen concentrator whirring in the corner, bubbling water in the kettle, and the sound of Steve's rough breathing and James's light breathing.

“A-asthma m-meds,” Steve squeaks out, words rushed and stuttering, “G-general anxiety, asthma meds make it worse, I-I don't like to be caught off g-guard.”

“Maybe you should sit down,” James says, cautiously.

Steve glances down at his shaking hands, and tries not to think of how numb his legs feel.

He doesn't feel alright.

He shuts his eyes, grits his teeth, forces himself to take a deep breath.

(In through the nose, _one. two. three. four._ , out through the mouth, _one. two. three. four. five. six. seven. eight._ )

“Y-yes. Good idea.”

He shuffles over to the sofa next to the recliner, forces himself to at least attempt to breathe. He collapses on the sofa, and tries not to think of how close James is standing.

He's a few feet away, but that still feels a bit too close right now.

Steve thinks of how two months ago, this man broke into his house, and he wasn't even scared then. He broke into his house with two guns, a knife, and a metal arm. He could have died then, if things went a bit differently, but they didn't.

And so he's probably not going to die now.

Hell, James saved him from a fight earlier.

There's nothing to be scared of.

This is what Steve tells himself.

He takes in another deep breath, and looks up at James, who's looking down at him with concern.

“Better?”

“A b-bit.”

The sharp whistle of the kettle on the stove pierces the air, causing Steve to jump again.

“I'll go take care of that,” James says, and before Steve can say anything, he's already moved over to the kitchen.

By the time James comes back, two mugs in hand, Steve's calmed himself down, mostly. His hands are still shaking, and his heart is pounding a bit harder than usual, but he's calm.

James makes sure to make his presence known as he moves closer. He sets one of the mugs down on the coffee table in front of Steve, and goes to sit down on the recliner.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I wasn't thinking, I guess.”

Steve shakes his head.

“It's fine. You didn't know.”

He takes the mug in front of him, and takes a small sip.

“Chamomile?” Steve questions. It's not what he would have picked, but it's not bad.

“Yeah,” James replies, “My... um. I used to get panic attacks as a kid. This woman who helped raised me, she'd always make me this, it's supposed to make you sleepy but it also works for just settling nerves, too. And I didn't want to do anything caffeinated, that probably would have clashed badly with your, um, asthma meds, you said?”

Steve nods.

“Yeah. I had to take a breathing treatment after I got back, and it just... one of the side effects is general shakiness. Coupled with my anxiety, it makes for some pretty bad nights.”

“You have anxiety? When we first met, you didn't seem, um-”

“I can usually push past it,” Steve says, gripping the scalding mug tight with his bony fingers, “I can sort of shove it back, and then just deal with it later.”

Steve frowns down at the yellow drink.

“I did have a panic attack after you left, actually,” he admits, and he keeps on staring down at the tea, because he doesn't want to look at James. “I mean, a masked guy with a small artillery at his hips had just broke into my house, who wouldn't?”

Steve glances up at James, who's now thinking, as evidenced by his slightly tilted head, slightly narrowed eyes.

“I... I can stop if you want. Seeing you, I mean. If it makes your anxiety bad, then-”

“No.”

The word slips out of Steve's mouth before he can stop it.

And he doesn't mind, if he's honest with himself.

“No, you don't have to stop. First time I didn't know who you were, this time you just caught me at a bad time. Other two, they weren't bad. You... seeing you isn't bad. I don't have anything to worry about, right.”

He doesn't phrase it as a question, but it is.

And it's a loaded one.

“Right,” James says, without a heartbeat of hesitation, that that one word manages to clear up, to define so much.

A few tight knots of anxiety begin to unravel in Steve's chest, because James has just informed him that he wouldn't do anything. And maybe he's lying, but Steve has a fairly strong bullshit detector and no alarm bells are ringing, and he's willing to take a chance.

“We should hang out sometime,” Steve says, “Without you breaking into my apartment, or an accidental meeting. Like, actual hanging out.”

“Yeah,” James answers, “That sounds nice.”

A moment later, he speaks again.

“But I'm going to need my wallet back if I'm going to take you out.”

“Oh. Right.”

Steve sets his half-empty mug down on the coffee table and stands. “I'll go grab it for you.”

He walks to his bedroom, taking his time, allowing himself a small breather.

James had said ' _take you out_ '.

Did the man who broke into his apartment just _ask him out_?

Although, he was the one who suggested it, Steve remembers. He was the one who offered to hang out. He grabs his wallet off of his dresser, and walks back.

The man sitting on his recliner isn't ugly by any means.

Quite the opposite, really.

His hair is a bit long, his eyes have bags, and the stubble on his face may be a bit unruly, but the scruffy look kind of works for him.

This time there's no leather outfit and weapons gracing his thighs, it's just a hoodie, jeans, boots. His metal arm is concealed by the hoodie sleeve and a fingerless glove, but his fingers still glint in the sparse light coming from the kitchen half of the room.

Steve turns a lamp on as he passes up the end table sitting at the far end of his sofa, brightening up the room significantly. He makes his way over to the other end, near to James, and hands him his wallet.

“I would say I'm sorry, but I'm not,” he says, with a crooked grin, because he finishes with: “ _James_.”

James takes the wallet and raises an eyebrow, with something cynical that isn't quite a smile playing on his lips.

“You're so proud of yourself, aren't you?” he says, as he slips his wallet back into his jacket.

“Yep,” Steve says, sitting down, taking his mug again.

“When did you even filch it?”

“When I fell on you,” Steve says, and maybe he takes a sip because he's thirsty, but maybe it's just so he can hide any blush that may cross his face at that particular memory.

“Wait, that was staged?”

“Nope. I just got the thought after it happened, and rolled with it.”

James nods, looking impressed.

“Not many people are able to get by me like that.”

Steve grins.

“I've had plenty of experience.”

“You're going to have to explain that,” James says.

“I'll explain that the day you explain how you got into breaking into apartments for a living.”

“Fair enough.”

* * *

Maybe breaking into Steve's apartment is a bad idea, but fuck it, he's done it once already.

He can't quite decide if he wants to go with ominous and creepy, or just sneak in and snatch the wallet undetected.

Maybe a median.

So that's why the soldier decides to ditch the work clothes and opt for a hoodie and jeans instead.

He's still completely silent when he breaks in at almost one a.m., and he bypasses Steve's shut door to go to the living room.

Steve woke up last time he broke in, he'll probably do so now. The soldier settles himself on a recliner in the living room half of the apartment's living room slash kitchen, and waits.

And waits.

And _waits._

And if Steve isn't up in the next five minutes, he's totally leaving.

Because sitting in the dark, while giving off the playfully dark aura that he's shooting for, is _boring_.

The soldier doesn't have to wait long, because, roughly four minutes later, he hears Steve's door opening, and him shuffling down the hall.

The tiny blond edges into his kitchen and flicks on the lights.

His eyes are still bleary and his bedhead is nothing less than extreme (one half perfectly pressed flat, the other stuck up on end, blond wisps tangled together). He's wearing a hoodie over his pajamas, and he's half asleep.

And he looks pretty damn cute.

Steve is stick thin, he has to be shorter than 5'4 and less than one hundred pounds. His skin is pale, his hair is limp, his every breath rattles in his flat chest like marbles in a tin can.

Steve Rogers is not conventionally handsome.

But, _holy_ _shit,_ is he cute.

The soldier watches as the half-asleep blond moves about his kitchen, grabbing a kettle and filling it, setting it on the stove, and turns to stand in front of a cabinet, sleepy eyes deep with thought over something.

It's only then does the soldier realize he's been watching from the shadows like a total creeper, and decides to make his presence known.

“I'm going to need my wallet back, you know.”

Steve jumps, and spins to face the soldier.

His blue eyes are wide in alarm, and then he notices that Steve's shaking all over.

Guilt washes over him instantly.

Breaking into his house and hiding in the dark was supposed to be a 'Oh, silly you, you scared me for a moment' thing. A joke. A reference to their first meeting. Light.

It was never supposed to be a deer in the headlights, look of absolute terror kind of thing.

The soldier has done those types of things before.

It's one of his specialties.

But the plain and heavy sense of panic surrounding Steve makes him want to never do it ever again.

The soldier frowns, and stands.

Steve flinches back.

Maybe he shouldn't have even come tonight.

Maybe he should have waited until noon tomorrow and knocked on his door and asked him for his wallet like a regular person.

Maybe he shouldn't have helped Steve in that fight, talked to him in that coffee shop.

Maybe he shouldn't have even taken the job for the sketchbook in the first place.

Maybe he shouldn't have done any of the things that had lead up to Steve looking as terrified as he is.

“I'm sorry if I scared you,” he says, and he realizes how stupid he sounds the second he says it. Of course he scared him.

He's a mercenary who broke into the worlds weakest mans apartment.

Of course he fucking scared him.

Steve blinks several times, and the room falls into an uneasy silence.

The soldier is about to say something, about to leave, about to just go and never come back because he's obviously just fucking things up here, when Steve speaks.  
“A-asthma meds,” he stutters out, voice weak and dry, “G-general anxiety, asthma meds make it worse, I-I don't like to be caught off g-guard.”

Anxiety.

This changes things, and makes the soldier feel a billion times shittier.

Because he knows how anxiety feels.

“Maybe you should sit down,” he says.

Back in the orphanage, after his parents death, before his 'transformation', he had anxiety.

He'd sit on the floor of the room he and four other boys shared, and he'd pull at his hair and sob and wish he was dead.

He was the type to hyperventilate, because breathing can be so goddamn hard when the world is pressing into you like a thick black void. He can't even begin to count the times were he was sobbing one moment, be able to get no air in his lungs, and waking up on the sofa in Miss Margret's office the next.

He doesn't know if Steve's the type to hyperventilate, but if he is, he'd prefer he hyperventilate on the sofa, so if he passes out, it's somewhere soft, as opposed to the rough floorboards that make up the kitchen floor.

Steve shuts his eyes, grits his teeth, and takes a deep breath.

The soldier's terrified for a moment, unsure if he's about to start gasping for air, when Steve exhales.

He drags the breath out for eight seconds total.

Steve glances up.

“Y-yes. Good idea.”

Steve shuffles over to the sofa by the soldier, and sits down. His hands still tremble, his shoulders are still hunched, he still doesn't look okay.

The soldier edges back slightly, giving him some space.

Steve takes in another deep breath, and looks up at him.

“Better?” the soldier asks. He tries to keep his voice soft, and make himself as nonthreatening as possible. He's really glad that he decided to go with the hoodie and jeans, instead of the leather and mask.

“A b-bit,” Steve answers, a bit of a tremor in his voice.

A moment later the kettle on the stove whistles, loud and sharp, catching both men off guard. The soldier doesn't show any outward signs of alarm, Steve flinches again.

“I'll go take care of that,” the soldier says.

He makes his way over to the kitchen quickly, and takes the kettle off the stove.

There's not many cabinets, so two mugs are easy to find and set up, and the cabinet that Steve was staring at is still open, revealing several boxes of tea.

There's no less than three boxes of Earl Grey stacked on each other. A couple kinds of herbal, some English Breakfast, and small box of caramel tea in the corner.

It's been ages since the soldier had tea.

Miss Margret used to hoard tea like they were going to stop making it one day. Dozen of boxes, and she stored most of them in her office.

After waking up from passing out, Miss Margret would make him stay on the sofa, give him a blanket that was softer than the ones all the kids usually slept with, and made him a cup of chamomile.

Chamomile in blue mugs and that ratty old sofa and the one soft blanket and listening to the click of Miss Margret's knitting needles as she talked about her pet dog, those quiet moments calming down from panic attacks, those made up some of the best memories of his childhood.

If not the _only_ good memories.

He grabs the box of chamomile, and takes out two tea bags.

He lets them steep for a few minutes, poking at the tea bags with a spoon to speed up the process, before stirring a spoon of sugar into each.

When he makes his way back over to Steve, he makes sure that his boots resound loudly against the floorboards. A heads-up, so he won't catch Steve off guard again.

He sets one of the mugs on the coffee table in front of Steve, and sits back down on the recliner.

“I'm sorry,” he says, voice quiet, pensive, sincere. “I wasn't thinking.”

Steve shakes his head. He seems a bit more calmer now.

“It's fine.”

The soldier knows that it _isn't_ fine.

“You didn't know.”

He's picked up on hidden agendas, marital affairs, betrayals, double agents, faked bloodlines, it's his job to know things. He can have a persons history calculated in seconds.

He should have known something as easy to pick up as an anxiety disorder.

The soldier knows that it isn't fine, Steve isn't fine.

Steve picks up the mug, and takes a sip.

“Chamomile?” he questions.

“Yeah. My...” And he isn't quite sure where to begin, so the soldier simply starts from the beginning. “Um. I used to get panic attacks as a kid. This woman who helped raise me, she'd always make me this, it's supposed to make you sleepy but it also works for just settling nerves, too.”

Steve's watching him with interest, curiosity piqued, and the soldier swallows thickly. It's been a long time since he's even thought about his life before, much less told it to someone. He isn't quite sure how comfortable he is with it.

But he's fairly sure that Steve isn't quite comfortable with having a panic attack, so he decides that if Steve asks him about any of _before_ , he owes him that much to tell him.

Steve doesn't, though.

So, he continues.

“And I didn't want to do anything caffeinated, that probably would have clashed badly with your, um, asthma meds, you said?”

Steve nods.

“Yeah. I had to take a breathing treatment after I got back, and it just...,” he pauses as he searches for the right words to explain. “One of the side effects is general shakiness. Coupled with my anxiety, it makes for some pretty bad nights.”

“You have anxiety?” the soldier prompts, although he already knows the answer is yes.

It's not that he doesn't believe Steve, the events prior were more than enough to cement the fact of Steve's anxiety.

But it does make him wonder exactly how this small man ticks.

Because this small man stood up to a fully armed man, defenseless, in the middle of the night, with more bravery the soldier had seen than in the majority of the people he worked with, for, or against.

When he had anxiety, he was more or less a sleepless, shaking, messy husk of what a fifteen year old boy could be.

If that boy met the man he currently was, he'd more than likely pass out on the spot.

“When we first met, you didn't seem, um-” the soldier begins, before Steve cuts him off.

“I can usually push past it,” Steve explains, grip tightening on his mug, “I can sort of shove it back, and then just deal with it later.”

Oh, that was a gift he wishes he could have had as a kid.

Steve turns his gaze down to his drink.

“I did have a panic attack after you left, actually.”

And he sounds so goddamn _human_ in that instant.

Straight from a man who rules his anxiety and that the soldier wished he was, to a _human_ who _deals_ with his anxiety that the soldier doesn't even think he's worthy of knowing.

Steve's quick to speak again.

“I mean, a masked guy with a small artillery at his hips had just broke into my house, who wouldn't?” he says, brushing the situation off.

The soldier frowns to himself.

Maybe he isn't even worthy of knowing Steve.

Twice when he's met him, he's had panic attacks.

He studies the blond man, eyes narrowed in contemplation.

Maybe he doesn't deserve him.

Steve looks back up, catching his gaze.

“I... I can stop if you want,” the soldier offers, because it's what's best despite what he _wants_ , “Seeing you, I mean. If it makes your anxiety bad, then-”

“No.”

One word, solid as stone.

“No, you don't have to stop. First time I didn't know who you were, this time you just caught me at a bad time,” Steve says, an excuse disguised as an explanation, and the soldier doesn't say a word in protest because honestly, he simply doesn't want to. “Other two, they weren't bad. You... seeing you isn't bad. I don't have anything to worry about, right.”

It's a question, and one the soldier is quick to answer.

“Right.”

Because he wouldn't hurt Steve.

That he's positive of.

Steve seems more at ease.

“We should hang out sometime,” he says, “Without you breaking into my apartment, or an accidental meeting. Like, actual hanging out.”

“Yeah. That sounds nice,” he replies.

It might be the first time in a long time he's actually _excited_ about something.

But, if he's going to show Steve a good time, he's going to need money to do it.

Which brings him back to the original point of his visit.

“But I'm going to need my wallet back if I'm going to take you out,” he says.

“Oh. Right. I'll go grab it for you.”

He leaves the room.

And then does his particular word choice hit the soldier.

He said ' _take you out_ '.

The soldier isn't quite sure how to react to the fact that he may have asked Steve out.

He's not even sure if that's a _bad_ thing.

It turns out he doesn't have much time to think it over, because Steve's back in just a few moments. He turns on a lamp as he passes it.

“I would say I'm sorry, but I'm not,” he says, after passing him the wallet. A crooked grin spreads on his lips. “ _James_.”

So, that's who he is to Steve now, the soldier supposes.

James quirks up an eyebrow, and tries really hard not to smile at the sound of his name on Steve's lips. It's a little weird, honestly, being called by James by someone who isn't Peggy or Bruce or Darcy, but it isn't really a bad thing.

“You're so proud of yourself, aren't you?” he says, because Steve does look really smug.

“Yep,” Steve says. He sits down, and takes his mug in his hands.

“When did you even filch it?” James asks.

“When I fell on you,” Steve answers, and even though he tries to cover his face by tilting up his mug, James can still see the tint of pink on his pale cheeks.

“Wait, that was staged?”

If that was staged, Steve is a hell of an actor.

“Nope. I just got the thought after it happened, and rolled it it.”

It's still pretty impressive.

“Not many people are able to get by me like that.”

Steve grins.

“I've had plenty of experience,” he says, and James can tell that there are dozens of tales and anecdotes residing in the meaning of that sentence.

“You're going to have to explain that,” he says.

“I'll explain that the day you explain how you got into breaking into apartments for a living.”

“Fair enough.”

* * *

James leaves shortly after receiving his wallet. It's past two a.m. and Peggy is in the foyer, as always. She's frowning over the computer at the front desk, and when James walks in, she gives a distracted hello before turning back to it.

Steve still has tea in his mug when James leaves, and he lingers over the lukewarm drink for a while, musing over conversations, panic attacks, stolen wallets.

James decides to not bother with a shower, changes directly into a t-shirt and flannel pajama pants, and flops onto his bed.

Steve washes his mug out before going into his room, and burrowing under his mountain of covers.

James falls asleep quickly, the events of the day dancing in his mind.

Steve falls asleep quickly, the exhaustion of the panic attack weighing into him.

The chamomile helps both of them sleep better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think out of all the ones I have written so far, this chapter is my favorite.  
> Annnddd James finally has a name!   
> Again, let me know what you think!


	5. Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is this a date or not?” he asks.  
> “I don't know,” Steve says, before smiling. “How about this? You show me a good time, and at the end I'll let you know if it was a date or not.”

 

“Okay, before we do anything, I think we should talk.”

It's two days later, and only two days after they've seen each other.

A sunny Sunday evening, barely warmer than two days ago.

They stand on the sidewalk outside of Steve's apartment, James shifting his weight from foot to foot awkwardly, Steve staring up at him, wide-eyed and patient.

He looks a bit different today. His hair is combed a bit straighter (a stark contrast from the wild bedhead from several nights prior), and he's dressed up a bit, a sweater over a button up shirt instead of the hoodies James usually finds him in. The boots he's wearing add two or three inches to his height, but James still towers over him by a good bit.

“Talk about what?” Steve asks.

James takes a breath, glances away for a second, gathers his words.

“Is this a date or not?” he asks.

Steve thinks for a moment, head tilted.

In that moment, about half a billion thoughts flutter through James's mind.

If it isn't a date, then they'll go down to Cafe Shield, eat, and that will be that.

If it _is,_ however, James is going in blind.

He had spent the last two days scraping his brain for what people usually do on dates, beyond the 'dinner, movie, midnight walk' triad.

He's been on plenty of dates for missions, undercover work, but he doesn't really feel right on planning an actual date on fake ones. Besides, those always involved a file full of information to exploit, he knew what he was getting into ahead of time.

But he has no clue what he's getting into with Steve.

Because beyond his name, a few medical issues, and his apartment number, he doesn't know much else.

“I don't know,” Steve says, before smiling. “How about this? You show me a good time, and at the end I'll let you know if it was a date or not.”

James nods.

“Okay then.”

He's internally screaming.

Orchestrating a date with a guy he didn't really know was hard enough, but a date that might not even be a date sounded incredibly harder.

“Where to first?” Steve asks, and the light in his eyes shows that he knows exactly the effect he's having on James.

“Cafe Shield,” James says in a heartbeat, because if you think about it, a coffee shop could work well for either hanging out or a date.

“Alright,” Steve says, and they begin walking down the icy sidewalk.

He always feels aware of everything, it comes from being a mercenary and the fact that if you aren't in tune with your surroundings you'll most likely end up dead, but walking down the sidewalk with Steve, James feels aware of _everything_ , overly so.

The puff of visible air that comes out with each rattle of Steve's chest, and the fact that the treads on Steve's shoes are worn thin and he probably shouldn't be walking on icy sidewalks with those. There's the soft mechanical whirring of his arm and Steve's oxygen tank, and the periodic burst of air from the tubes hooked over Steve's ears.

“So,” he says, because even with whirring and breathing and air rushing it feels rather silent, “I know barely anything about you.”

“We've only met four times before,” Steve replies, “I know nothing about you either. Besides the fact that you break into apartments.”

He glances over at James out of the corner of his eye, smiling smugly.

“I'm never going to shake that, am I?” James says, half joking, “It's always going to be 'this is James, he breaks into apartments and that's it'.”

“Yep,” Steve replies, “Unless you have anything else interesting that I should know about.”

“Hmm,” James says, attempting to find something that isn't a lie, and also fits the lighter tone of the conversation. Most of his life is composed of secrets, and most of those secrets are dark.

“I'm a Pisces, I think jazz is the most superior form of music, and I can wiggle my ears,” he says.

“Interesting,” Steve says, before smiling again, “But none of that has the same ring of 'serial apartment raider'.”

“True,” James says, “But now you have to say something about you.”

After a moment, Steve shrugs.

“Nothing to say, really.”

He says it with a shrug and a smile, as if it isn't a big deal, and maybe if James hadn't just told him three things, he would have let it go.

He doesn't give a shit about astrology, the jazz thing is actually a bit of a secret but not a big deal, and there are at least forty other people out there who know about the ear thing, because he'd show it to every kid he met back at the orphanage.

But _still_.

“Nope,” he says, “I told you some things, you tell me some things.”

They're halfway to the Cafe, and if James has his way, Steve will speak up before then. If not, he still has the entire date-or-not-date to grill him.

“You were the one who said those things, I didn't say you had to say anything,” Steve says with a grin.

“Right,” James replies, “And now I'm saying _you_ have to say something.”

Steve rolls his eyes.

“I like jazz too,” he says, after a moment.

“Doesn't count,” James replies, “You can't repeat stuff I already said.”

“So there's rules now?”

“Yep. We're definitely going to exchange favorite albums and artists later, but say something else.”

Steve rolls his eyes again.  
“Okay,” he says, adding a layer of fake exasperation on top. “Fine. Um, my favorite color is blue.”

It isn't much at all, and the pensive look on Steve's face shows that he doesn't want to reveal much more.

But it's a start.

* * *

Sundays are usually boring for Steve. It's a break from his art commissions and both of his part time jobs, the only day of the week he has off.

Steve doesn't have many friends, nor hobbies, nor anything, really.

When James had suggested they go out Sunday, he accepted in a heartbeat. But that was less due to the fact that his Sundays were uneventful, more because of his interest in the metal armed man.

He had woken up at eleven, spent an hour showering, dressing nicer than usual, taking more time fixing his hair. There's a moment of thought over putting that concealer that Nat loaned him over the bags under his eyes, but it never was that effective anyway, so he skips it.

Time seems to drag, but the time set came all too soon.

At one, Steve makes sure the laces of his boots are tight, checks his pocket for his inhaler, wallet, keys, grabs his oxygen tank, and goes out to wait on the front steps of his apartment building.  
Despite the multiple layers of clothing he has on, the cold weather still sends a chill into his bones.

It doesn't take long for him to spot James walking up his sidewalk, looking mostly the same and a little bit different.

The waves in his hair seem more careful, deliberate, and he doesn't seem as weighed down as he usually appears to be.

He looks excited, even.

Almost as soon as he is standing next to Steve, he speaks.

“Okay, before we do anything, I think we should talk.”

“Talk about what?” Steve asks, because, honestly, there's so many things that need to be talked about.

He doesn't know a single thing about James, beyond the fact that his name is James, he breaks into apartments, he drinks chamomile, and he has at least two guns and a knife.

James did break into his apartment. Twice.

He isn't sure where the two of them stand.

Those, and more, there's plenty that needs to be talked about.

“Is this a date or not?” James asks.

Oh.

Steve hadn't really thought of that.

But the idea of going on a date with James isn't exactly unappealing.

Quite the opposite, actually.

However, he isn't sure if that's what James wants.

“I don't know,” Steve says, and there's a heartbeat of what might be disappointmenton James's face. So Steve smiles, and continues, “How about this? You show me a good time, and at the end I'll let you know if it was a date or not.”

James's nods.

“Okay then,” he says, and Steve finds it funny that a guy who can unflinchingly break into apartments and possibly worse looks so damn panicked over this.

There's a twinge of smugness when Steve realizes he's not the one freaking out for once.

“Where to first?” Steve asks, and oh, is he curious to see what James has planned.

“Cafe Shield,” James answers immediately.

“Alright,” Steve replies.

The two begin walking down the icy sidewalk, and Steve can't help but smile.

Maybe it's because he's on a maybe-date with a rather attractive brunet, the exact kind of date he'd been told numerous times eh couldn't archive because he was just _Steve_.

Or maybe it's because he's on a maybe-date with _the guy who broke into his apartment_ months ago, and maybe it's a bit crazy.

Either way, it's exhilarating, and it makes his overworked heart pump even faster.

James looks a tad bit frenzied, but before Steve can comment, he speaks.

“So, I barely know anything about you,” he says, breaking the silence.

“We've only met four times before. I know nothing about you either,” Steve replies, before cracking a grin, “Besides the fact that you break into apartments.”

“I'm never going to shake that, am I? It's always going to be 'this is James, he breaks into apartments and that's it.”

“Yep,” Steve replies, voice light and grin still in place, “Unless you have anything else interesting that I should know about.”

“Hmm,” James says, frowning down at the ground as he thinks. He takes a few moments before speaking. “I'm a Pisces, I think jazz is the most superior form of music, and I can wiggle my ears.”

“Interesting,” Steve says. He himself is a Cancer (and from the minuscule amount he knows about astrology, he knows that those signs are some level of comparable, if one believed in such things), jazz isn't quite his favorite (but he does listen to it on occasion), and he can't wiggle his ears (but he can cross his eyes). “But none of that has the same ring of 'serial apartment raider'.”

“True. But now you have to say something about you.”

And Steve isn't quite sure what to say.

He makes art, the majority of it internet commissions, spanning artistic pieces of people's original characters to gay porn of Star Trek ships. Gay porn isn't quite something you discuss on the first date and/or hangout.

Besides art, there's the the two jobs, one at a theater and one at a college. Checking people's movie stubs and cleaning up trash. And maybe if it was a date or a hangout with a man he bumped into on the street, or a woman he met in a coffee shop, or someone somewhere else, those would be acceptable forms of conversation. But he's on a date with a man who definitely breaks into houses as a living, if not more, and making popcorn and mopping up school hallways seems a little pale in comparison to the other man's activities.

And there's nothing else he can think of.

He shrugs.

“Nothing to say, really,” he says, with a nonchalant smile.

James frowns slightly, eyebrows furrowing.

“Nope,” he says, “I told you some things, you tell me some things.”

By the landmarks all about them, Steve can tell that they're a little over halfway to the cafe. There's no worming out of this one, and no sudden arrival at the coffee shop to cut their conversation short.

“You were the one who said those things,” Steve says, a more or less obvious deflection. Perhaps if he buys some time, they'll reach the cafe, and with the process of ordering, finding a place to sit, maybe James will forget about digging a bit too deep. “I didn't say you had to say anything.”

“Right. And now I'm saying _you_ have to say something.”

Steve rolls his eyes.

Okay then.

“I like jazz too,” Steve settles on, because it's true and it's not a big deal.

“Doesn't count. You can't repeat stuff I already said,” James says.

He quirks and eyebrow up. “So there's rules, now?”

“Yep. We're definitely going to exchange favorite albums and artists later, but say something else.”

Steve rolls his eyes again, because Bucky's being pretty damn infuriating right now.

This is what he gets for going on a maybe-date with a man who broke into his apartment.

“Okay,” he says, adding a bit of exasperation in his tone, just because he can. “Fine. Um, my favorite color is blue.”

It isn't much at all, and Steve knows this. It's one of those silly, innocuous things, barely anything really.

But there's a glint of a smile in James' eyes, and Steve thinks that maybe, _maybe,_ he'll share a bit more if he could get him to look at him like that again.

* * *

It's late at night and they're perched on the doorstep of Steve's apartment building.

The maybe-date went well.

Steve smiles. He stands on his toes, presses a swift kiss to James' cheek briefly, and smiles again as he drops back down to his heels.

“It was a date.”

He all but flies into his building.

James is left standing there, face reddening slightly.

When Steve finishes his shower, gets new clothes, drinks his nightly tea, and settles into his bed, his eyes gaze up at the dark ceiling. He can't stop thinking, because he _kissed_ him. However chaste, even just on the cheek, _he kissed him._

When James lies in his mess of a bed, eyes shut tight, sleep comes easy. A heartbeat before he slips into darkness, he remembers the flighty feeling of Steve's lips.

And _Bucky_ smiles. In that one, fleeting moment in between sleep and awakeness, the corners of his mouth upturn, and he feels human for the first time in a very long time.


	6. Family, More or Less

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You can stop lying,” Clint says, in between sips of his tea, “We saw you making out with him Sunday night.”  
> \----  
> “So,” she repeats. “What's their name? The person you're dating, I mean.”
> 
> James's eyes flash up from his cards, and by the smirk on Darcy's lips, he knows he gave it away entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a bit different, as in its a bit of a break from the 'same events, Steve PoV and then James PoV' pattern.  
> But I think it's still pretty good.

Perhaps one of the reasons why Steve was more calm the first time he met James, was because it wasn't the first time someone broke into his house.

Far from it, even.

As evidenced by the three people sitting on his couch when he enters his apartment.

Clint's flipping through TV channels, Nat's sitting in the middle, bottle of red nail polish in hand, and Sam's at the other end, bowl of popcorn on his lap, half arguing with Clint over watching Mean Girls or Legally Blonde (Clint, of course, is in favor of Mean girls, with Sam claiming it's overrated. Nat occasionally enters a quip about how it's been ages since they've watched Gnomeo and Juliet).

Steve stares at them for a moment, before sighing deeply, and walking into his apartment.

“Why,” is all he says, as he heads to drop his groceries down on his kitchen island. “Power went out at our place,” Natasha supplies, not looking up from her nails.

“No it didn't,” Steve says, as he works on unpacking his things. “We live in the same apartment building. If the power went out at your place, it'd be out at mine.”

Nat glances up at Steve, and frowns at him from across the room.

“Are you planning on kicking us out?”

And, while the idea of kicking them out and watching a movie alone does have it's appeal, he says: “No.”, and continues unpacking his things.

He takes all of his stuff out of the bags first, and then begins placing things in their spots.

Milk in the fridge, tea in the cabinet, Clint just threatened to put on Fifty Shades of Grey and Sam is half yelling at him for it, and Nat just spilled her nail polish on Steve's sofa, as if it doesn't have enough stains.

Steve faces his open cabinet, ignoring the calamity that is his friends, debates weather to put his new box of chamomile by the Earl Grey and  vanilla caramel (the ones he drinks the most), or alongside the other herbal kinds.

He's been drinking chamomile nightly since the last time James came over to his apartment, since the first time James made tea for him.

He sets the box down by his other favorites. And he sets some water to boil, because, fuck it, if he's going to deal with the three nerds on his sofa for a few hours, he needs tea.

“Make me some,” Nat calls out, accurately sensing what he's doing.

He adds enough for the four of them, because once Clint and Sam stop their bickering they're going to want some too.

Steve turns and leans against the cabinet behind him, and watches the three.

Nat's blowing on her nails to help the polish dry, and Sam's attempting to wrestle the remote from Clint (Nat, who is still in the middle, is apparently impervious to the two).

And although they drink all his tea, spill things on his sofa, and have loud arguments in his apartment after breaking into it, they're really not that bad.

Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton have lived in the apartment next to Steve for several years now, and for the first two years of him knowing them he couldn't tell if they were roommates or married.

Turns out they were simply engaged, but with one of those unique kind of relationships that made them seem more like best friends than fiances. Nat was practically covered in tattoos and drank enough tea to rival Steve, Clint had hearing aids and was the kind of guy who had IMDB bookmarked on his phone and knew all the obscure actors in _everything_. They owned a dog together, and the day after they moved in they had latched onto Steve and made him their self-proclaimed best friend.

They were also the only two who knew why Steve had an aversion to drawing in sketchbooks.

Sam Wilson was the newest addition to their friend group, having moved into the apartment on the other side of Steve's only a few months back. Sarcastic, charismatic, a movie taste the stark opposite to Clint's, and was halfway in getting a psych degree. He had dog-sat for Nat and Clint a few times, signed for a few packages for Steve, and the three had accepted him eagerly.

They are a mess, as evidenced by the scene playing out before him. Clint and Sam arguing over the remote, Nat purposefully ignoring them.

But they'e his mess.

Steve smiles, and then the kettle whistles, and he fixes their tea.

Chamomile for him, a bit of cream and a bit of sugar. English Breakfast for Natasha, plain black. Vanilla caramel for Clint, also black. Earl Grey for Sam, a lot of cream, a lot of sugar.

He manages to bring the four mugs over to the coffee table in one trip, and sets them all down in front of their respective owners. He takes his mug and winds up curling up in his armchair, the same one James sat in last time he came.

Steve clutches his hands around his mug tightly, soaking up the warmth from it. The heating in his apartment is _shit_ , and he would have grabbed the blanket he always has hanging around if Nat didn't already have it wrapped around her shoulders.

Clint turns the TV off.

Steve holds his mug a bit tighter.

They didn't just come here for tea and a movie.

“What is it?” Steve asks, deciding he'll be the one to begin the conversation that his friends apparently have planned.

Natasha smirks, but it's Sam who speaks first.

“What's his name?” he asks, and he grins, even as he takes a sip of his Earl Grey.

Steve frowns.

Because he is certainly _not_ telling his over-protective best friends (one of whom is a Vet, and the other two who have caused and won several _dozen_ bar fights in the years he's known them) that he's dating a man who he met by _breaking into his apartment._

And yeah, maybe Clint and Natasha met in the middle of a riot when they were escaping the police together, but they won't see it that way.

They'll just see stick-thin Steve dating an over-six-foot thief who has a metal arm.

And he knows that his friends don't underestimate him, and they certainly don't see him as weak, but if he had found out that any of them were dating a robber, he'd be pissed and worried too.

So, he plays dumb.

“What do you mean?” he asks, as casually as possible. He can be a convincing liar when he wants.

Nat quirks up an eyebrow.

“The guy you're currently dating,” she says, obviously not buying into Steve's feigned innocence.

“I'm not dating anyone,” Steve says, “Haven't for a couple years now, you know that. Where are you getting this from?”

“You can stop lying,” Clint says, in between sips of his tea, “We saw you making out with him Sunday night.”

Steve scowls.

Of _course_.

“It wasn't making out,” he corrects, because since the cat's out of the bag, he may as well make sure they're not making this out to be bigger than it is. “Just a quick kiss, on the cheek . Nothing more.”

“Details,” Nat demands.

“I am not going to describe kissing in detail, Natasha.”

“Not just the kiss. Everything.”

“How did you guys meet?” Sam asks, giving what he thinks is an easy starting point.

Steve pauses.

And while the idea of “We met at the cafe, he's a lawyer and he's nice.” sounds like a good idea in theory, he doesn't quite feel like lying to his friends.

If things with James get serious, they're going to find it all out eventually.

“You aren't going to like it,” he half-warns, half prefaces. “And you met Clint when you punched his face in a riot. Remember that.”

“Is it worse than that?” Clint asks.

“All you're doing is making us more curious,” Sam says, “Spit it out already.”

Steve clears his throat awkwardly.

“We met when he kinda broke into my apartment,” he says.

Sam looks a little concerned, Clint looks unfazed, and Nat remains impassive.

“Could be worse,” she says.

Fuck, they aren't going to like this.

Steve finishes his sentence.

“Because of the sketchbook.”

He then takes a large sip of tea, so whenever the others start pestering him with questions, he has an excuse not to speak.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Clint says, his eyes gone wide.

Natasha drops her playful smirk entirely, her face shifting into the stone she usually portrays when she's feeling any emotion on the negative side of the spectrum.

“Steve,” she says, “ _What the fuck.”_

Steve swallows his tea, and raises a hand up.

“Let me explain,” he says, and maybe they are right and this situation is a 'Steve, what the fuck' one, but James is also a relatively good guy once you get to know him.

“Look. He doesn't work for Stark. From what he said, I'm guessing he works on contract. He came in, took the book, left. That was it. It wasn't like he was trying to kidnap me or take me back there or anything."

Natasha leans forward, setting her mug down on the coffee table before turning back to Steve.

“Steve,” she says again, “He _could have._ If he agreed to work for Stark once, he could again and-”

“He isn't going to,” Steve snaps, which stuns the other three a little, because Steve doesn't just _snap_. “He hasn't even talked to Stark personally. It was just through Pepper. It was just for the Sketchbook and he doesn't even know what it's for and _he is not working for Stark!_ ”

His hand are trembling, and his tea spills a little because of it.

“And, yeah, maybe he is dangerous, but it isn't because of Stark. And even if he was, I'm fucking _done_ with what happened then controlling my life! I'm already fucked up enough from it, and I'm not going to let it screw this up for me too. He's nice. I'm actually _excited_ about something again. He's a Pisces and he likes jazz and maybe he is dangerous but I am not going to stop seeing him.”

Steve shuts his eyes tight for a second, and takes in a deep breath.

“Thank you for worrying about me,” he says, “But I can handle myself.”

“We know that,” Clint says, surprisingly being the first to speak. “We know that you can kick ass, but we're still going to worry about you anyway. Dude, even if this guy was a florist who had a billion puppies and was the most perfect person ever, we'd still worry. And I mean, we probably are gonna worry more because, yeah, sketchbook stuff, but we're not going to force you to stop dating him or anything.”

“Just, be careful,” Sam says, choosing his words very carefully, “I don't know anything about the sketchbook or Stark or whatever, but I know it effected you, and if you even think he could be related to that, then be careful.”

“He isn't,” Steve says.

And Nat remains silent.

She does so for a few minutes, eyes narrowed in thought. This isn't unusual, she occasionally drops out of conversation completely to think over something, returning a few minutes later.

“If he hurts you,” she says, eventually, “I am going to fucking murder him.”

She says it completely straight faced, and Steve is a bit unsure if it's just one of those casual things friends say about each others boyfriends, or if she means it.

But she takes a sip of her tea, and smiles.

“Tell me about him,” she says, voice lighter, turning the room lighter.

Steve catches onto her easily.

This is her way of saying he can date him.

And he knows she might not be happy about it, or comfortable with it, but if it means so much to Steve, then she'll support it.

“His name is James,” he begins.

* * *

When James opens his door, he hopes to God it isn't an enemy of his.

Not because he can't handle it, but because he's feeling too fucking tired to.

Knocking someone unconscious and dragging their body out of his apartment building unnoticed is hard work, and he stayed up until three a.m. last night on a mission, and he doesn't feel like going through with it.

So he opens the door with one hand on the gun tucked into his waistband at the back of his pajama pants (which he's only planning on bashing over the assailants head, because blood is a bitch to clean, and he's trying to get out of killing anyway).

There's a brunette in slippers and a TRON hoodie, bag of cookies in one hand, deck of cards in the other.

Darcy looks him up and down for a moment, before frowning.

“You always forget,” she admonishes.

And then James remembers it's Friday and Fridays are poker nights with Bruce and Darcy.

“Put a shirt on and get your ass to Bruce's apartment,” Darcy orders, and she's right up there with Peggy on the 'brunette people who are half my size but I listen to anyway' list.

“I wouldn't mind if you came shirtless, but the new guy is coming and he's cute and I don't want you scaring him off. Or stealing him. I call dibs. You can't have him, put a shirt on.”  

James goes into his apartment, leaving his door open, and grabs the nearest shirt he can find (something long-sleeved and gray and well worn like most of his other shirts), slipping it over his head. He casually slips the gun out and sets in down on his sofa, in one swift movement that Darcy doesn't see.

He doesn't bother with jeans or shoes, because Poker Night is informal, as evidenced by Darcy, who's in a TRON hoodie, Aperture Science pajama pants, and bunny slippers. James, in his shirt, Walking Dead pajama paints, and socks, thinks he'll do just fine.

“You should probably fix your hair if you want to make a good impression on this guy,” James says, as he turns the lights off in his apartment and shuts the door behind him.

He only says it because Darcy's hair is a _mess_ , and it looks like a tornado's personal playground. Half of it is in a ponytail and the rest has long fallen out.

“If he's gonna want me he should know what he's getting into,” she says, which has a good bit of truth to it because her hair usually is in some form of disarray.

Still, she shoves the bag of cookies and deck of cards into his hands, and tugs the ponytail out of her hair, tying it back up a heartbeat later.

“Better?”

“Better,” James says, and the two begin moving down the hall, to Bruce's apartment.

“You got one of those I can borrow?"

Darcy slips one off of her wrist and hands it to him, taking the cookies and cards after.

“You really should start buying your own,” she says. James should, probably, but he doesn't do it often.

But he crashed out on his sofa at three a.m. last night and slept in until four in the afternoon, and he's well aware that his hair is probably messy as fuck. He pulls it into a ponytail, and by the time he's done wrestling with it, they're at Bruce's door.

They don't bother with knocking, they just enter, and by the subtle hint of relief on Bruce's face they can tell he's glad for it.

He's sitting at his kitchen table, across from the new guy. Bruce has never been big on small talk, and his relief is evident.

“Hey,” he says, brightly, at Darcy and James's entrance. The two shut the door behind them, and cross over to the kitchen, sitting down at the table.

“I brought cookies,” Darcy says brightly, setting down the bag on the table, the cards right next to it.

Bruce flashes her a smile.

“Yay,” he says, voice still a bit on edge.

“What kind?” the Loki, voice sounding a slightest bit disdainful.

And, he isn't really the new guy, because he moved in a few weeks ago, and has been to one or two poker nights before. But he's still the newest tenant, and the newest in their group, and so they refer to him as such. He occasionally (always) acts a bit snooty, and he's frowning down at the cookies like they're dirt.

Of the four of them, James is the second most recent one in the group, with having only two years in the building.

Bruce Banner lived at the end of his hall, and was a quiet man who (at first) generally kept to himself. He used to be a scientist and that's all he would go into about it, and now he writes.

Darcy Lewis lives next door to James, and without her, the apartment building would have just been a building full of strangers. She was the one who dragged them all together (and Peggy said she would love to come for poker nights, but she had a building to run and she'd win every game, so there was no point). She co-runs a bakery with her friend, who is sort of dating new guy's brother.

“Pumpkin spice,” Darcy answers, “I fucking live off of these.”

Bruce shuffles the cards, and James takes a cookie. In one bite, he can tell why Darcy lives off of these.

“They're awesome, Darcy,” he says, and his comment prompts the British man to his left to take one.

Loki has a quirk of a smile on his lips after he takes a bite, and Darcy grins, because she know she has him.

Her cookies, brownies, cupcakes, and more, that was how she won over James, Bruce, and Peggy. And James can tell that's her plan to win over new guy.

Their poker nights are more or less just an excuse to hang out. They don't bet (because Darcy would have a fortune, James would have a nice profit, and Bruce would be flat out broke), and half the time they're more focused on the conversation than the cards.

“So,” Darcy begins, once the cards are dealt and they're all frowning down at their hands.

Loki and Bruce are fairly easy to read (although, James suspects that to others they'd be hard, but he has years of reading people and picking up on tells behind him). Darcy, however, is next to impossible to tell if she has a good hand or not.

“So,” she repeats. “What's their name? The person you're dating, I mean.”

James's eyes flash up from his cards, and by the smirk on Darcy's lips, he knows he gave it away entirely.

“How did you know?” he asks. He decides not to play around with it, because that one sudden glance up from his cards completely gave him away, and if he plays dumb now, he's _never_ going to hear the end of it from her.

“This is like, the first time you've actually gotten a hair cut in weeks. And dude, Monday, when I saw you in the hall, you didn't even notice me. And, get this,” she grins, and addresses the whole table.  _“You were smiling.”_

Bruce grins, eyes flashing over to James brightly, and Loki quirks an eyebrow up.

“He never smiles,” Darcy informs him.

“Tell us about them,” Bruce prompts, poker momentarily forgotten.

“There isn't really much to say,” James answers, “I mean, we've met a few times, had our first date Sunday, so things are still kind of new.”

“First things, name, rating out of ten, job,” Darcy demands, setting her cards down on the table, poker game definitely forgotten.

“Steve, it depends on your scale, and artist, I think,” James replies.

“Well, what does he look like?”

“Tiny,” James automatically answers, “The whole 'really tiny but will still attempt to snap your neck if you step wrong' aura around him. Big ears, big hoodies, big glasses, but it all works on him. He's cute.”

And if super soldier assassins blushed, he'd be blushing now.

Instead, he just kinda hides his face behind his cards.

“You really like him,” Bruce comments, smiling softly.

“Yep.” James says, and he's really hoping that the conversation turns off of Steve soon.

He'll either wind up blushing or smiling, and blushing would be embarrassing.

Smiling, however, would most likely prompt Darcy to scream from excitement (because, in the years he's known them, he hasn't smiled once where they could see it). And if Darcy screams, it's going to startle Bruce who really doesn't do well with sudden noises, and then cards are probably going to fly everywhere and Darcy might hug him.

So hopefully conversation will shift soon. But the gods hate him, apparently.

“How did you meet?” Loki asks, and James can't tell if it's out of politeness, curiosity, or boredom because their poker game is now nonexistent.

“I picked up a delivery at his house,” James says easily.

His friends think he's a delivery person.

Which is more or less true, because he does pick things up and gives them to other people, but the whole 'legal' part is a bit smudged.

“Cute,” Darcy says, before breaking out into a grin, “Oh! You should totally invite him over to a poker game sometime!”

“I don't know about that,” James says, but he knows now that Darcy has the idea, she's never going to give up on it.

“C'mon, it'll be fun! And besides, me and Bruce, we're your best friends. It's our job to screen your boyfriends, make sure they're okay for you.”

James quirks his lips up in something that isn't really a smile but _almost_ is.

“We'll see,” is all he says.

Darcy breaks out into a grin and Bruce smiles. 

* * *

“So he's coming over to the next poker night,” Darcy says before she leaves, and darts out the door before James can protest. “I'm excited to meet him, see you guys then!” “

He's definitely coming over at some point,” Clint says to Steve, “Like, next movie night maybe. Definitely.”

Both Steve and James maybe panic a little. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for postinng this so late in the day too!! My wifi's been all weird lately :/  
> Also, this story has over one hundred subscribers now, so I wanted to say thank you to all of you guys!!! <333  
> Anyway, let me know what you think!!


	7. Old Faces, Old Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, do you want to come over for a bit?  
> Sure :)

 It takes James a month for him to invite Steve over.

He has a bad habit of typing up messages and never sending them, to old friends, partners, anyone in his contacts list. It was simple venting, and he'd always backspace the messages before he would hit send.

His thumb slips on a Friday afternoon, and his phone proclaimed the message 'Delivered', proudly.

_Hey, do you want to come over for a bit?_

And James spend eleven minutes more or less staring down in horror at his phone.

He and Steve have been officially dating for a month. Five dates total, not counting their first. Two dinners, one movie, one walk in the park, one coffee date.

But he hasn't been over to Steve's since the night where he reclaimed his wallet, and Steve hasn't been to his place at all.

Steve is more open, and he is more open.

But every goddamn time James asks something, a favor or a date or _anything_ , he feels as if he's overstepping his bounds. That Steve's glass, and he's a sledgehammer, and honestly, a man like him doesn't deserve to be with a man like _him_.

He's rough and jagged and broken, and Steve is too, but in a different way.

James is terrified of breaking him farther.

And he's terrified that he's actually _caring about something_ again.

The chiming of his phone breaks him out of his panic.

_Sure :)_

James' breath catches in his throat, because _that went so much better than expected_. And it's not lost on him that he isn't scared of torture or wars or guns or dying, but texting a guy makes him nervous.

James shoves those thoughts aside, and types out his address. Steve tells him he'll be there in a few minutes.

He shuts off his phone, closes his eyes, and exhales.

They fly back open a second later, when he remembers the fucking mess that is his apartment.

Various files are scattered all around, as are coffee mugs, and a wide assortment of knives. One of his guns are right out in the open, and that's just the coffee table.

James stands up, and that comes along with the realization that he's only half dressed.

He needs to move, and _fast_.

He darts up from his sofa, and decides that the weapons are the first thing that needs to go. He grabs the knives off of his coffee table in one hand (in a way that is _not at all_ safe), the gun in the other, and rushes to his room. He stashes them in the top drawer of his dresser, and since his drawers are open, he takes a moment to tug on some proper clothes.

While he darts about his place in a frenzy, (files in his desk drawer, hide the historical novels he likes to read in his spare time, finally picks up that questionable jacket that's been lying in the corner of his living room for far too long), he thinks.

Maybe he's so uncomfortable with texting, because you can't read a person when you're reading texts. There are subtle hints and indicators, but it's nothing like speaking face to face.

Steve glances to the side when he's about to lie or brush something off, and he doesn't even realize that he has a habit of cleaning his glasses when he's flustered. He'll drum his fingers when bored, tap his feet when antsy, chew on his lip when he's thinking really hard.

And James can't read that over text, or phone calls.

He winds up having more than enough time to clean his place up a bit, and his phone says it's been half an hour since Steve said he'd come over.

Him and Steve don't live far apart, and it certainly isn't a half an hour walk. James takes a step to his door, maybe Steve got lost in the building, when there's a knock on the door.

James crosses the room quickly.

"Hey," Steve says, once the door is open. He smiles up at him, but there's a lingering tiredness in his eyes.

"Hey," James says, ducking out of the doorway so Steve has room to walk in. "So, this is my place."

Steve walks in, oxygen cart trailing after him.

"Nice," he comments, taking in the large living room that the front door opens up into.

"Did you have any trouble getting here?" James asks, shutting the door behind them.

Steve glances over at him, almost too quickly.

"No, why?" he says.

"It took you a while," James comments, wondering if he said something wrong.

"Oh," Steve says, sounding almost relieved, "No, I just had to get dressed, get my oxygen tank and stuff ready to go."

"Was it Peggy?" James asks, because she does have a habit of occasionally grilling the visitors of her tenants.

Steve goes pale.

"She sometimes interrogates visitors here, she's pretty strict about who she allows in the building," James explains, knowing something is up.

"Oh," Steve repeats. He glances off to the side for a heartbeat, before returning James' gaze. "She gave me directions to your place. That was it."

James frowns.

Something is wrong.

There's that tiredness in Steve's eyes that James usually only finds in his bathroom mirror.

James knows where his came from.

And it's simple to hide some days, hard to hide others, and he knows how it feels to have a fogginess in your head that won't vacate and a weight in your heart that will not lighten.

Steve's showing symptoms. Shifting his weight, not meeting James' eyes, absentmindedly playing with the tubes going down to his oxygen tank, and that goddamn tiredness that makes the purple bags seem worse. The world seems to draw in around Steve, making him seem even smaller, and his shoulders are more drawn in, his arms wrapped almost protectively around himself.

He seems small, hurt, tired, _something is very wrong._

“Steve,” he says, trying to keep his voice light, “Are you okay?”

Steve has a frown to mirror his, and he glances down at the ground, thoroughly thinking something over.

“Look,” he says, after a moment, “I've had a hell of a day. Stuff happened. I don't want to talk about it.”

He wants to press the issue, talk about it, erase the _tiredness_ in Steve's eyes.

But digging further will most likely result in pushing Steve back farther.

So instead of pressing, he nods.

“Okay,” he says. “You can talk to me about anything, though, but I won't make you.”

Steve lets out a breath neither of them knew he was holding.

“Thank you,” he says, smiling softly.

And while James half wants to hug him, he doesn't want to bring to light just how much he can tell Steve isn't fine. So:

“You want something to drink? Eat?”

Steve thinks for a moment, glances behind James into his kitchen.

“Coffee sounds nice,” he says, and James nods brightly.

Thank god he didn't ask for food, because James can't cook for shit.

“Coffee, then.”

He turns and heads to his kitchen, Steve trailing after him, his oxygen cart making clanking noises over every bump in the wooden floorboards.

“My friends want to meet you,” Steve says.

James has a counter with stools lined up, and Steve perches himself up on one, propping his elbow up, chin in hand, watching James dart around to get a pot of coffee started.

“Friends?” James prompts, glancing up from the small bucket of coffee grounds he has out.

“You didn't think I had friends?” Steve asks, although there's just a hint of teasing in his voice.

“No, I mean, you just never brought them up before,” James replies. On all the dates he's been on with Steve, he can't recall one time he mentioned his friends.

Steve shrugs.

“Never really came up,” he says, “It's just my three neighbors in my apartment building.”

“Oh,” James replies, setting the grounds in the coffee machine, pushing the right buttons to get it to start. “Why do they want to meet me?”

“To give you a shovel talk, probably.” At James' slightly confused look, Steve clarified. “You know, the whole 'If you hurt him, I'll slit your throat and dump you in my backyard' speech.”

“Right,” James says, nodding, “They must care about you a lot, if they're willing to threaten a serial apartment raider – wait, do they know about how we met?”

Steve gets slightly sheepish, and nods.

“Yeah. Um, I was gonna tell them that you were a lawyer or we met at the cafe or something, but I just kinda accidentally told them.”

“And they weren't upset?” James leans on the counter, arms in front of him, closer to Steve.

“A little. Not about how we met. Clint and Nat, that's two of them, they met during this riot, they were on the run for police and wound up half beating each other up before they realized they were on the same side. So yeah, they don't mind how we met.”

“What were they upset about, then?”

Steve looks vaguely uncomfortable, but answers anyway.

“That you were working for Stark,” he says it quietly, almost as if he's scared of what James will say in reply.

“Oh. That,” James says, mentally going over the details of the case, what to say to make Steve feel less anxious. “I don't _work_ for him. I just do jobs for whomever pays, loyalty in my business isn't really a thing. So, I'm not friends with him, never even met him, and although the pay was good, I probably won't be working for him again. So your friends don't have to worry.”

“Okay,” Steve says, looking slightly more at ease.

But then James opens his mouth, and words slip out that he didn't mean to release.

“So what happened between you and Stark anyway?”

At the look on Steve's face, James regrets saying anything almost instantly.

Whatever happened between the two was _big_ , and Steve was obviously still upset about it, as evidenced by the deer in the headlights look on his face at James' question.

“I didn't mean to say that,” James blurts out, and he wonders when letting words slip out started, because before he met Steve, he could have sworn he had much better control of his mouth. “I'm sorry. You don't have to answer.”

Steve nods once, sharply, and folds his hands in his lap. He looks down at James' tile counter, as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

“It's a long story. Only told it to two people before. Not sure if I want to tell it again. Still bothers me, all that happened.”

He speaks clipped and short, and refuses to glance up.

“I understand,” James says, “Hell, I have so many things in my past I never want to talk about again, I understand. You don't have to say anything about it. I'm sorry.”

Steve looks up.

“It's okay,” he says, although it's pretty evident that it isn't, “I just... it was a dark time, thinking about it makes my anxiety bad.”

He pauses and scowls at nothing in particular as he thinks.

“And, the thing is, I wasn't the best person around then. I don't want you to know me like that.”

James looks at Steve intently.

Because he can't quite imagine anything that will make Steve seem lesser in his mind.

But he has his fair share of skeletons in his closet, and things he would never share with a single soul. He has his and Steve has never pried, and he should return the favor.

“I understand,” he says, again.

The coffee pot beeps, and James turns to grab two mugs.

“But,” he says, again without thinking, “For the record, I think you're a good person. And maybe it wasn't the best time, but we all have bad times, when we're bad people. I've had plenty. But it doesn't mean you can't be a good person now, Steve.”

He glances over at Steve out of the corner of his eye, who's deep in thought for a second, before offering up a half-smile.

“Thank you, James.”

“No problem.”

He drags one of the stools around the counter so he can sit opposite to Steve, and sets down two steaming mugs in front of them.

“So, tell me about your friends.”

* * *

The text from James is unexpected, but welcome.  


Steve's working on a painting, arms practically covered in a mess of blue and yellow paint, when his phone buzzes. It takes him seven minutes to scrub his arms up.

_Hey, you want to come over for a bit?_

It takes him five minutes to decide on how to answer. He settles on short and sweet.

_Sure :)_

James replies with his address, and Steve tells him he'll be there soon.

And he would have been.

His paint supplies didn't take long to clean up, and besides the few minutes spent looking for his missing keys, it didn't take him long to get ready to leave. He and James live fairly close to each other, he finds out.

James' apartment building is bigger than his, with bright red brick walls, towering a couple stories in the air. Steve walks in carefully, making sure not to hit the glass door with his oxygen tank, and he pauses at the small rug placed in front of the door to wipe of melting snow and dirt off of his boots.

He's focused down on his shoes, when a voice breaks into his thoughts, and his heart _freezes_.

“Steve?”

It's a breathless whisper, and Steve feels like the air was punched right out of his lungs, and he imagines that's how she feels.

He glances up from his shoes, and looks up to find a glimpse of his past sitting behind the front desk.

“Peggy,” he says, quietly.

She stands from her seat but doesn't move, and she freezes behind there.

Peggy looks mostly the same. There's a bit of aging around her eyes but only if you squint, and her hair is maybe a little shorter. But it's still brown and curled, her makeup is the same, she's wearing a dress like the ones she used to wear.

She looks like she hasn't changed at all.

“It's... It's been a while,” she says. The tension in the air is thick, and Steve wants nothing more to turn and leave, or to find James. He just wants to be _away_.

“Three years,” he says, automatically, “Almost four.”

Peggy nods, before frowning slightly, eyes sad.

“We had all wondered were you went,” she said, voice obviously restrained, “You didn't even say goodbye.”

Steve _scowls_.

He moves out of the doorway and further into the lobby, tugging his oxygen cart after him. He pauses halfway to the front desk.

“What did you expect me to do? Stick around, stay for the after-party full of people who ruined my life?”

“There wasn't an after-party,” Peggy says, voice losing a bit of it's calm, “It ruined all of us Steve, but it was years of our lives, all of our lives, together. You left without a word. We were all worried!”

“It ruined all of us?” Steve questioned, voice rising, “Because, hell, Stark is still in the papers. Pepper's still running the company. Banner's books are on the best sellers list. That sure is a funny definition of the word 'ruined'. And you look like you're doing fine. Buying apartment buildings isn't cheap, so you took Stark's bribe, then?”

“It wasn't a bribe-”

“Right, it was a _gift_. Compensation. I heard that shit. But it's money he gave because he doesn't want the story getting out. But that doesn't matter. It's nothing new. Stark will buy anything,” he pauses, scowls again, “But don't you _dare_ try and say that this fucked all of us over. You guys moved on. You guys are capable of moving on. I'm still stuck right where I was after it all.”

Peggy grips her hands on the edge of the desk, and frowns, her lips pulling into a tight line.

“Steve. What happened was on all of us. We all carry the weight of that.”

Steve clenches his hands into fists.

“You don't get it,” he says, voice cracking, “God, Peggy, I thought you of all people would understand. You guys do have guilt, but that's gonna leave someday. I have to live with what happened _daily._ I'm not allowed to forget! I'm on more meds than I can count, I can't go around without this fucking oxygen machine or I'll _die_ , and my heart is so weak that I probably won't live a day past fifty! And yes, we all have to deal with what happened, but ultimately, it was _my fault_. And I have to live with it every goddamn day.”

His hands are shaking, and he's halfway to the point of crying, but he won't allow that in front of anyone.

Tears aren't Steve's thing.

But breaking, apparently, is, because it seems like he shatters every day.

Peggy notes his distress, and nods.

The air seems to still between them, and both know that they aren't going to continue this conversation, for both the benefit of both of them.

Peggy doesn't feel like having a screaming match with a man from a past life, and Steve doesn't want to break down completely.

They both come to this conclusion, and the tension lessens.

“I'm sorry that you have to endure that,” Peggy says after a moment, voice quiet but sincere.

Steve nods once.

Peggy isn't going to push it. Steve knows her, and he knows that Peggy _wants_ to push it, but he won't, and he's glad for it.

“Maybe we can talk sometime,” she suggests, “Catch up.”

It doesn't sound half bad.

He doesn't hate Peggy, he just hates the situation, and so he nods.

“Maybe,” he says. “Sorry for shouting.”

“It was justified.”

The two fall into silence, unsure of what to say now.

Because, honestly, what more is there to say? Peggy has nothing to say that won't upset Steve farther, and Steve doesn't want to say anything more about it and risk breaking completely.

Besides, Peggy isn't the problem.

Steve blames himself for everything.

But he also blames Stark.

They're the problem.

“Why are you here?” she asks, suddenly.

“Right,” Steve says, dragged back into reality. James is waiting on him, and he's probably wondering where Steve is right now. “I came to see someone.”

“Who?” Peggy asks, “I can give you their room number.”

“James,” Steve answers.

Peggy frowns slightly.

“Oh,” she says, hint of something negative in her voice. “How do you know him?”

“Um,” Steve says, and he's wondering how to tell a woman that he had a small romance with years ago that he's now sort of dating a man in her building, “We've been seeing each other. For a while.”

“Oh,” Peggy says again, and Steve can tell the tone in her voice isn't jealously. It's something else, something else he can't pin. “Fourth floor, room 4C. The stairs are to your left.”

“Thank you, Peggy, and that's all he says before turning to head to the stairs.

“Steve,” Peggy calls, a heartbeat later, making Steve pause, glance over his shoulder at her. “Be careful around him. I don't know what you know about him, but he's dangerous. Be careful, I don't want you to get hurt.”

He smiles a joyless smile at her.

“Thank you, but I can handle myself.”

And with that, Steve goes up the stairs, hauling his oxygen tank, and he doesn't dare look back at the brunette watching him go.

Four flights of stairs take a toll on him, and when he makes it to James' floor, he makes sure to walk slowly.

He arrives at James' door shortly.

He's half tempted to turn around and leave, call James and tell him something came up and he couldn't come over. The argument downstairs took whatever energy he had in him right out, and Steve feels like nothing more than laying down and forgetting the world exists for a while.

He knocks, anyway.

James can help him forget, he decides.

The door swings open almost as soon as he knocks.

“Hey,” Steve says, mustering up a smile that he's really trying hard to make it look genuine.

“Hey,” James replies, moving out of the doorway so Steve has room to walk in. He looks almost awkward, a strong contrast to how he used to be, always stony and confident. He's loosened up around Steve since their first meeting. “So, this is my place.”

James' apartment is much bigger than Steve's. It opens up into a living room area, with a hallway to the right, and one down the middle, leading to a kitchen and bedroom, respectively. It's mostly clean, but there's still a lingering sense of disorder around it, with a few books scattered here and there and there are at least two knives underneath his coffee table.

“Nice,” Steve comments, because it is a nice place.

“Did you have any trouble getting here?” James asks, completely innocently. He shuts the door behind him, but neither of them move any farther into the apartment.

Steve glances over to him, wondering if he somehow knew what transpired downstairs.

“No, why?” he asks, cautiously.

“It took you a while,” James explains.

“Oh.” _Oh._ Nothing to do with what happened downstairs. “No, I just had to get dressed, get my oxygen tank and stuff ready to go.”

“Was it Peggy?” James asks.

Steve goes pale, and his heart feels like it stops for the second time today.

_Does he know?_

And that's the only thing going through Steve's mind.

Because he _can't_ know.

 _He can't and he shouldn't and he couldn't stand the fact that he might know_.

And even if he just overheard things, he's going to have questions and Steve cannot handle questions right now and maybe coming over was a bad idea and maybe dating him at all was a bad idea and maybe even just getting to know him was a bad idea because honestly, Steve doesn't even deserve someone like him and -

“She sometimes interrogates visitors here,” James says, cutting into Steve's thoughts. Steve snaps out of it, realizing he never gave James an answer, but James continues. “She's pretty strict about who she allows in the building.”

“Oh,” Steve stammers out. His throat feels dry as a desert, and he's pretty sure his hands are shaking again. So, he lies. “ She gave me directions to your place. That was it."

James frowns.

Steve's hands shake harder.

He knows that _he_ knows that something is wrong.

But, god, Steve cannot deal with any more questions today.

“Steve,” James says, voice soft, “Are you okay?”

Steve frowns and glances down at the ground.

And maybe he should tell him.

Definitely not the whole story, but maybe something like _I knew the lady who owns your apartment building and we sort of used to date but that isn't the thing, the thing is we were both part of something that completely fucked me for life, but, hey, she doesn't think so. She thinks it's something we all left with but I got the worst of it and it kind of is really wrecking me right now that no one seems to understand that I'm the one who has to deal with it all, while they can all move on. And so I feel like shit right now, and I kinda want to take a nap and I kinda just want to die, so no, I'm not really okay, James._

But he doesn't allow himself to say that.

“Look,” and hell, now his voice is shaking too, matching his hands, “I've had a hell of a day. Stuff happened. I don't want to talk about it.”

And he sounds blunt and maybe he sounds rude, but it's the truth and he's not going to say another thing.

James stares at him for a moment, eyes narrowed in thought, but he simply nods.

“Okay. You can talk to me about anything, though, but I won't make you,” he says.

Steve lets out a breath he didn't even know he was holding.

Because James isn't going to press, and he's _so goddamn relieved._

“Thank you,” he says, barely a whisper, with a soft smile to match.

James takes half a step towards him and maybe it's for a hug or a pat on the shoulder or something along those lines, but he stops himself.

“You want something to drink? Eat?” he asks, instead.

Steve thinks for a moment. Tea is his go-to drink when he feels like shit, but he's going to wind up falling asleep on James' couch if he doesn't get some strong caffeine in him. And while spending the night at James' doesn't sound like a bad idea, he doesn't want to be half asleep the entire time he's over.

“Coffee sounds nice,” he says, looking up at James to make sure that's an okay thing to ask.

James nods.

“Coffee then,” he says lightly, making Steve feel like he made the right choice for whatever reason.

James turns to go to his kitchen, and Steve follows.

Steve winds up being the first to speak, while he settles down on a stool in front of a counter, while James moves around, gathering the things to make him some coffee.

“My friends want to meet you,” Steve says, deciding that's something lighter they can talk about.

“Friends?” James asks, glancing up from coffee grounds.

“You didn't think I had friends?” Steve says, half teasing. He's well aware that he never brought up Clint, Nat, and Sam before, but he wasn't sure if he gave off the 'complete loner' vibe.

“No, I mean, you just never brought them up before,” James is quick to say.

“Never really came up,” Steve replies, with a shrug, “It's just my three neighbors in my apartment building.

“Oh. Why do they want to meet me?” James says, after pushing a handful of buttons of the coffee pot, starting it up.

“To give you a shovel talk, probably,” Steve answers, although he knows the probably is a definitely. Natasha even said that was the reason, and Steve had no doubt that they'd actually do it.

James looks slightly confused, so Steve clarifies.

“You know, the whole 'If you hurt him, I'll slit your throat and dump you in my backyard' speech.”

“Right. They must care about you a lot, if they're willing to threaten a serial apartment raider,” quoting the label Steve gave him on their first date, before a thought hits him, “Wait, do they know about how we met?”

Steve gets slightly sheepish, realizing that maybe that fact isn't exactly something James would have wanted told. He nods hesitantly.

“Yeah. Um, I was gonna tell them that you were a lawyer or we met a cafe or something, but I just kinda accidentally told them.”

“And they weren't upset?” James asks, leaning on the counter, closer to Steve.

“A little. Not about how we met. Clint and Nat, that's two of them, they met during this riot, they were on the run from police and wound up half beating each other up before they realized they were on the same side. So yeah, they don't mind how we met.”

“What were they upset about, then?”

Steve doesn't really want to say.

But he says it anyway.

“That you were working for Stark,” he says, quietly.

He watches James expectantly, waiting for his reply.

“Oh. That.” James says. He pauses for a moment, gathering his thoughts, before continuing. “I don't _work_ for him. I just do jobs for whomever pays, loyalty in my business isn't really a thing. So, I'm not friends with him, never even met him, and although the pay was good, I probably won't be working for him again. So your friends don't have to worry.”

“Okay,” Steve says.

And it's such a relief to know that James isn't dealing with Stark anymore.

He feels more at ease, comfortable even. He's less anxious about the argument with Peggy from earlier, and is feeling a bit better when James speaks again, shattering whatever calm Steve had.

“So what happened between you and Stark anyway?”

Steve stills completely, eyes going wide, because this isn't a question he can dance around.

It's straight and it's blunt, and he either answers, lies, or declines to answer.

And he doesn't want to lie to James, and he doesn't want to decline and push him away.

 _But he can't answer_.

So Steve sits there frozen, completely unsure of what to do.

By the mild look of horror on James' face shows that he didn't mean to ask that.

“I didn't mean to say that,” James says, voice almost frenzied, “I'm sorry. You don't have to answer.”

Steve swallows thickly, and nods once. He takes his hands off the counter and folds them in his lap, and stares down at the tile counter, because that's easier than looking at James right now.

“It's a long story.” He isn't sure why he's speaking, and he wants to stop but he doesn't. “Only told it to two people before. Not sure if I want to tell it again. Still bothers me, all that happened.”

And maybe he's half terrified of how James is going to answer. He can't handle questions, he can't handle pity.

“I understand,” James says, voice betraying just how much he understands. Hell, he's a man who breaks into apartments for a living, of course he has to have some form of past that haunts him. “Hell, I have so many things in my past I never want to talk about again, I understand. You don't have to say anything about it. I'm sorry.”

Steve forces himself to look up.

“It's okay,” he says, although he doesn't feel okay at all. He finds himself continuing, against his better judgment. “I just... it was a dark time., thinking about it makes my anxiety bad.”

He pauses, and frowns at the memories being dragged up.

“And the thing is, I wasn't the best person around then. I don't want you to know me like that.”

And that's the truth.

A cut and clipped version of it, but it's the truth.

“I understand,” James repeats.

The coffee pot beeps, and James goes to fill up two mugs.

“But, for the record, I think you're a good person. And maybe it wasn't the best time, but we all have bad times, when we're bad people. I've had plenty. But it doesn't mean you can't be a good person now.”

And although Steve never knew it, those were the words he'd been needing to hear for almost four years now.

That there's maybe hope of moving on.

That he might not be a fucked up wreck for the rest of his life.

That there's someone out there (in front of him, two mugs in hand), that he knows _for sure_ doesn't think of him as a wreck.

“Thank you, James,” he answers, with a half smile to go along with it. It feels inadequate, but it's all he has to offer in the way of words at the moment.

James drags one of the stools around the counter so he can sit opposite to Steve, and sets down the coffee in front of them.

He changes the conversation, and that's something Steve's grateful for.

“So, tell me about your friends.”

* * *

“And hey, one good thing about them knowing we're dating is that Nat isn't trying to set me up on any blind dates now. It was like her hobby.”  


“Well, I'm glad I can save you from that fate. And she sounds like she'd get along with my friend Darcy, she's always trying to get me together with someone. Her taste in people is... questionable, though.”

“Really?”

“Currently her sights are set on the brother of the guy her best friend is dating. He's some form of European, dresses mostly in green, and hates everything.”

“Maybe _you_ should be the one setting _her_ up on dates.”

“And, right, my friends want to invite you over to one of our poker nights.”

“Poker nights?”

“Just me, Darcy, European guy, and Bruce from down the hall, we get together once a week to play poker. We don't bet or anything, and it's pretty much just an excuse to talk and eat Darcy's cookies.”

“Sounds fun.”

“So you'll come?”

“I'll go to one if you come to one of me and my friends movie nights.”

“Deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is the longest chapter so far, almost six thousand words! The whole story is a bit over forty thousand so far, and I have a lot more planned out. Let's just say that things are only just beginning to heat up :)  
> So, yeah. A little bit of insight into Steve's past, and more Peggy!  
> Let me know what you think~


	8. Poker Nights and Interrogations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So,” Steve says. “That was... interesting.”

James seems to be almost nervous, Steve notes, when he and him walk down the hall from his apartment to one of his friends.

It's kind of cute, actually.

“Just... They're going to be weird. Darcy, especially. She's going to be the whole 'tell me _everything_ ' one. Loki is just going to be... _Loki._ But Bruce will be pretty calm. He's always calm.”

“Alright,” Steve says with a nod. “Anything else I should know before going in?”

James thinks for a moment.

“Right. They don't know about my, um, job. They think I'm a delivery guy.”

“Okay,” Steve says, because that does make sense as a cover.

“And you will get addicted to Darcy's cookies. Trust me.”

“Alright,” Steve replies. It's rare that James is more talkative than him, and so he lets him ramble, enjoying the shift in the norm.

They make it to his friend's apartment shortly, and the second the door opens, Steve's suspicions are confirmed.

Bruce Banner is sitting at the kitchen table.

“Hey,” James says, shutting the door behind them, after they enter.

Bruce's eyes glance up from his phone, and he does a double take at Steve. His eyes go wide.

Steve is quick to shake his head, making Bruce slightly confused.

Steve tilts his head towards James, and shakes his head again.

James appears to mistake Bruce's surprise for confusion.

“This is Steve,” he explains, “Y'know, I told you guys about him last week?”

Bruce glances from the tall brunet to the short blond once or twice, before nodding, standing from his chair.

“Yeah, um, yeah. Right. I just forgot you were bringing him over,” he stutters out, and Steve has to fight the urge to roll his eyes. Bruce was always horrible at lying. “Um. Hi.”

“Hi,” Steve says, sounding much more secure in his white lies than Bruce, “It's nice to meet you.”

“N-nice to meet you too,” Bruce stammers out.

Steve waits a moment before putting his back-up plan into action.

He slips one hand into one pocket, puts a confused look on his face, feels the rest of his pockets.

“Shit,” he says, “I think I forgot my phone at your place.”

“Oh, I can go grab it for you,” James says.

“No, you don't have to,” Steve protests, but James is already halfway out the door.

“I'll be right back,” he says.

Exactly how Steve planned.

He expected James' friend Bruce to be the Bruce he knew, and even if he turned out not to be, with James leaving the room for a few minutes it'd be a good opportunity to get a feel for his friends.

Turned out Bruce is  _Bruce_ , and Steve's glad that he 'accidentally' left his phone at James' apartment.

He crosses the room quickly, until he stands in front of Bruce.

“Oh my god,” Bruce says, standing from his chair, “Steve.”

“Hey,” Steve replies.

“Steve,” Bruce repeats, “It's _you_. God, I didn't think I'd ever see you again, after everything.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “I didn't really plan on seeing any of you guys again.”

“I don't blame you,” Bruce says, a heartbeat later. Steve's slightly surprised, and Bruce continues. “I mean, I honestly wouldn't blame you if you hated us. It was... it was bad.”

Steve nods.

“It was.”

“So how have you been... how has your thoughts been? Anything, um, anything like _you know_?”

Steve shakes his head.

“Got anxiety issues like hell, but those psychological effects left. I had a few problems a few weeks following it all, but uh, never hurt anyone. It wasn't ever as bad as it first was.”

Bruce nods. “And your health?”

“Sick as fuck,” Steve says, being blunt. He's a bit more comfortable with answering Bruce's question, because Bruce is speaking purely out of concern. “Worse than I was before.”

“Oh,” Bruce says. He gets a look on his face, one of absolute sympathy, and a second later Steve finds himself wrapped up in a tight hug.

“I'm so sorry Steve,” he says.

Steve hasn't been hugged in a very long time.

And there's something so goddamn sincere in Bruce's tone.

So Steve's caught off guard, but a moment later, he returns the hug eagerly.

“Thank you, Bruce.”

They part a second later, and Steve smiles up at him.

“I've been doing fine, though. Don't worry,” he says, “But the thing is, James doesn't really know. About Stark, or anything. I want to keep it that way.”

Bruce nods, again, “Of course.”

“So, we might have to act like we don't know each other for a while. Until I tell him. If I ever tell him.”

“Okay,” Bruce says. “That's fine. I never told him anything about The Project anyway. So he wouldn't even be able to guess.”

Steve smiles.

“Thank you so much.”

Before either can say anything more, the door opens. Instead of James walking in, in comes someone matching the description of European guy, with a tall blonde and short brunette trailing in after him.

“Loki,” Bruce greets, “Hey. Um, this is Steve, you know, the guy James was talking about last week?”

Loki glances Steve over, and Steve would have been a little offended if James hadn't warned him he gave that unimpressed look to absolutely everyone.

“Right,” Loki says, after a moment. “Anyway. My brother and his girlfriend insisted on coming tonight.”

Loki brushes past them to take his seat at Bruce's table, which only has four chairs around it. And so, Bruce scurries off to grab three more, talking as he does so.

“Hi,” he greets, tight smile in place.

Steve knows Bruce isn't exactly _against_ meeting new people, but meeting new people without warning? Not his forte.

“Hello,” the brunette says. Loki apparently bypasses introductions entirely, he's already playing on his phone.

The towering blonde seems to be much more at ease than everyone else.

“Hi!” he greets, radiating positive energy as bright as the sun. “My name is Thor. This is Jane.”

Bruce nods. “I'm Bruce, and this is Steve.”

“Nice to meet you,” Steve says.

They're saved from awkward conversation by the door opening again, this time James enters, followed by a short woman.

“Got your phone,” James says, moving into the room quickly.

“Jane, Thor!” the woman, Darcy, Steve assumes, exclaims upon walking in. “Bruce, hey, guy I don't know, also hey, and Loki!”

She attempts finger-guns in his direction, coming out slightly awkward because of the bag of cookie's she's holding. Loki rolls his eyes, and she grins wide.

James makes it to Steve's side quickly.

“Found it,” he says, passing him the phone to him, before lowering his voice. “Hope it wasn't too awkward with just you and Bruce. He can be a bit... uncomfortable with new people.”

Steve shakes his head.

“No, it was fine. He seems like a pretty cool guy.”

“Cool,” James says, “That's good that you get along.”

By the time their short conversation is finished, Bruce had assembled the extra three chairs around his table, and the seven unseated found themselves drifting to it. Soon they were all settled around the table.

“Let us proceed with the, ah, poke game,” Thor says, with beaming smile still in place.

Loki clicks off his phone, slipping it into his pocket.

“Poker,” he corrects, gently.

“Right,” Thor says, turning to the rest of the table.“I am afraid my English is not the best.”

“Where are you guys from?” Bruce asks, glancing up from the cards he's shuffling.

“Asgard,” Thor answers, pride in his tone saying he's more than a little patriotic.

“It's a tiny country, almost just an island. Near Europe,” Loki fills in. “You probably haven't heard of it.”

“It is beautiful,” Thor says.

“What's it like?” Steve asks, deciding to join in on the conversation.

“Nice weather, okay food, shitty politics,” Loki remarks.

Thor frowns.

“The politics are indeed shitty. Besides that, it was fantastic, though. I dearly miss it.”

“Why did you move, if you don't mind me asking?” Bruce questions, cards momentarily forgotten.

“'Tis a long story, and very...” Thor frowns again, attempting to search for the right word.

Loki cuts in.

“Our father was the king, I'm a royal bastard, he hates me, Thor was kicked out because as a teen he nearly started a war with a rival country. That's it.”

“Oh,” Darcy says, more than a little surprised, “Oh. That, um, that totally sucks. Um, want a cookie?”

“It does,” Loki says dryly. He pauses for a moment, eyes narrowed in Darcy's direction. “Yes.”

He takes the proffered cookie.

“Can I say something?” Steve interrupts, deciding to shift the conversation before things became even more awkward, “I kinda suck at poker.”

“That's... that's generally a thing you don't want to tell to a room full of people you're about to play poker with,” James says.

“No,” Darcy interrupts, “I mean, Thor hasn't even played poker, and let's face it, me and Bruce kinda suck.”

“True,” Bruce says, “For me at least. But you? You win like every game, Darcy.”

“That's because I have no clue what I'm doing half the time and bullshit my way through,” Darcy says. Jane smiles, because this is obviously to be expected from her.

“Holy shit,” Loki replies, and there might be something akin to admiration in his tone.

“So that's why I could never read you,” James says, after a moment.

“Yep. No clue what I was doing, so I had no reason to act any way,” Darcy says, before turning to Bruce. “Now, we are going need like seven spoons.”

Without waiting for him to reply, she bounces up from her spot, turning to Bruce's kitchen.

“Which drawer?”

“Second on the right,” Bruce answers.

“Now, I hope all of you guys know how to play Spoons,” she says.

“Spoons?” Thor questions.

Loki replies with a word in a language Steve doesn't understand, and Thor nods vividly, before proceeding to ramble in the same language. Loki smiles briefly, nodding in agreement.

Once he finished, he turned back to the rest of the table.

“Nevermind, I have played the spoon game before, only under a different name.”

“We used to play with knives,” Loki said, as Darcy returned to the table, spoons in hand. “Our mother hated it and it did make for a few hospital trips, but it was fun nonetheless.”

“We aren't going to that,” Jane says, “Probably get a few good stories out of it, but I am _not_ going to the hospital tonight.”

“No worries, my love,” Thor replies, “There will be no accidental stabbings tonight.”

“Good,” Jane answers.

“Rest of you guys know how to play, right?” Darcy asks, prompting nods around the table. “Alrighty then. Bruce, deal.”

Bruce deals out the cards quickly, and the eight quickly get invested in the game. The rounds move quickly (and it's fairly obvious the winner's most likely going o be either Jane or Loki).

Once Steve and James are both out, James leans back in his chair not so subtly leaning his arm to rest on the back of Steve's.

“Liking it so far?” he asks.

And Steve, if he's being honest, is.

This is almost as fun as movie night with his friends.

“Yeah,” he replies, as Jane slams down her cards and grabs for the lone spoon on the table. Loki scowls.

“I'm glad you're having fun,” James says.

“And I'm glad we're not playing poker. I would be broke by now if we were.”

Once Jane is done rubbing it in Loki's face and Loki is down pouting, Bruce gathers up the cards, shuffling them again.

“Another round?”

While he deals the cards out, Darcy leans over to James, and whispers something to him.

“I like him,” she says, in a voice that shows she can't whisper for shit. “You should totally hang on to him, James, I think he's good for you.”

* * *

When James gets settled down on a small sofa in Steve's friend Sam's apartment, his other friend Natasha clicks the TV  _off_ .

“Oh god,” Steve says, from his spot next to James, in a completely exasperated tone. “Guys, _no_.”

Natasha, who's perched on an armchair across from them, raises an eyebrow.

“We're just going to talk to him,” she says, “If he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to be scared of.”

James glances over at Steve, who looks  _really_ exasperated at this point.

“He has nothing to hide. And we came here to watch a movie, not grill him.”

“No,” Sam says. He's sitting on a sofa in between the armchair and the small one Steve and James are seated on. “You brought him over so we could meet him. You can't really meet someone while you're busy watching a movie.”

James shrugs.

“I don't really mind,” he says. He and Steve had planned on going over a good cover story for him, something a little less 'I break into apartments for a living', but since they had found out about how he and Steve had already met, he figured he'd wing the rest of the questions.

“I should have expected this,” Steve says, leaning back into the sofa.

“You really should have,” Clint comments.

“First things first,” Natasha says. On an assassin level, it's impressive how easily she slips into a completely serious-and-dark tone, but on a dating her best friend level, it's a little terrifying. “We are already aware of how you and Steve have met. Do you do this kind of work often?”

“Less often lately, but whenever I need money,” James replies, remaining just as calm as everyone else in the room is (except Steve, maybe, because he's currently glaring in Natasha's direction).

“Would this kind of work pose any sort of threat to Steve?” Sam asks.

Steve huffs.

“I'm not completely incapable of defending myself,” he mutters.

“I'm always careful,” James answers easily, “And any threats that may arise, I'm more than capable of taking care of. Besides, Steve's right. He is pretty good about defending himself.”

“You should've seen me the night we met,” Steve says, which he regrets a second later.

“If you fucking hurt him-” Natasha begins, going from mildly serious to fucking terrifying in an instant, before Steve cuts her off.

“Nat, he didn't hurt me, I swear. Do you honestly fuckin' think I'd go out with someone who broke into my house and hurt me?”

“What did you mean, then?” Clint asks, willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

“I had two guns, safety on, and a knife on my person. He stood up to me anyway. I had no plans of harming him but he didn't know that. He stood up to me, and generally when I'm on the clock that's not a reaction I get from a lot of people.”

Clint nods, slowly. Sam and Natasha seem to take their time thinking it over, Sam glancing from Steve to James, while Natasha stares unflinchingly at James, eyes narrowed in thought.

Natasha speaks first.

“Two things,” She says, turning to Steve, “One, I'm proud of you.”

“Thank you,” Steve says.

“Two, you're _a goddamn idiot_.”

“Um.”

“What kind of person argues with an armed man twice is size who broke into his apartment? I know you're capable, but holy shit, that was a risky move.”

“True,” Steve says, “But you've done the exact same thing. Remember when that guy broke into your place last year?”

Clint pipes up. “Technically she just hit him over the head with a baseball bat, not really talked to him.”

“That is besides the point,” Steve says, “Look, we've talked about this already. Nothing bad happened. Nothing bad is going to happen. I'm fine, nothing went wrong that night, hell, I even got a boyfriend out of it, so. No more talking about that night.”

And maybe James should be a little more curious about the apparent talks Steve and his friends have had about him, but right now he's more caught on the word  _boyfriend._

That hasn't ever been a legit label applied to him.

There was the two small flings he had as a young teen, back at the orphanage, but those were both at the age of thirteen, each lasted less than a week, and they didn't count.

And there was the occasional job where he had to seduce someone, or pose in a relationship, or so on and so forth, but none of that really counts.

But here he is, sitting next to a guy who's holding his hand and defending him, while he's getting a shovel talk from his friends.

This is as 'boyfriend' as it gets.

They do wind up watching a movie. Apparently the fact that James hadn't seen Megamind is abhorrent, and so Natasha pops the movie into the TV.

Roughly halfway through Steve leans on his shoulder, and James takes this as his cue to put an arm around him (Sam raises an eyebrow at this and Natasha watches them like a hawk (Clint's too focused on the movie to care), but James doesn't move his arm and Steve doesn't make him. “My friends will deal,” he says, low enough for just the two of them to hear.)

When the movie's wrapped up and Steve and James go to take their leave, Natasha stops him at the door. She drags him a few feet away, and if James hadn't trained himself to be good at eavesdropping, he never would have heard her otherwise.

“I approve,” Natasha says, and although that doesn't seem like much, Steve breaks into a grin, and thanks her.

Steve steps out into the hallway first, and before James can follow, Natasha grabs onto his arm, tugging him back.

“Hurt him in any way, I'll break into your apartment and slit your throat in the middle of the night, okay?”

She smiles up at him.

James nods.

“Understood,” he replies, and he isn't really scared, but comforted by the fact that Steve has friends who takes such good care of him.

As the two walk back down the hallway to Steve's place, James is the first to speak.

“I like your friends, they seem nice.”

* * *

They pause in front of Steve's apartment door.

“So,” Steve says. “That was... interesting.”

“Boyfriend,” James says, and he feels like punching himself in the face for a minute because he _definitely did not mean to say that_.

“Boyfriend?” Steve questions, head tilted slightly in a way that's sort of adorable.

“Sorry, didn't mean to say that,” James says, “I was just, um, I was just thinking about what you said. Earlier.”

“Oh,” Steve says, before he has a moment of internal panic of his own, “Ah, shit, I did call you my boyfriend. Um. Sorry? I should have asked earlier, made sure that was alright.”

“Oh, no, it isn't a bad thing,” James says quickly. “I'm fine with it. If, uh if you're fine with it, of course.”

Steve thinks for a moment, and then smiles.

“I'm fine with it. More than fine.”

James can't help but smile.

“So am I.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3


	9. A Night In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things wound up with Steve's coffee table shoved aside, the furniture pushed back, James's phone playing old jazz music.  
> Because James is going to teach Steve how to dance.

 

“Okay, you put your hand on my shoulder – here, just like that. The other one holding my hand like... this, yeah, and we're good.”

“This is stupid.”

“No it isn't.”

“Yes it is.”

“Steve, humor me.”

James is good at doing puppy dog eyes, so he pouts down at Steve.

Steve rolls his eyes, sighs deeply as if this is physically paining him, and glances back up at him.

“Fine,” he says.

James nearly grins.

They've been dating for a little over two months now, and are currently in Steve's apartment.

Steve called him up earlier and said he was feeling sick and had to cancel their date, and James had decided to drop in and surprise him.

Things wound up with Steve's coffee table shoved aside, the furniture pushed back, James's phone playing old jazz music.

Because James is going to teach Steve how to dance.

And Steve is having  _none of it_ .

_I'm sick, I'm tired, I have two left feet, I have to wear my oxygen tank tubes because my lungs are shit and we'll just get tangled up, I'll probably wind up tripping over something and having to go to the hospital, I have no rhythm whatsoever, I have never danced with anyone before-_

_Steve, shut up, we're doing this._

And somehow or another, he convinced him.

So James has a hand on Steve's waist (and he can't quite ignore the fact that his ribs aren't at all hard to feel underneath Steve's thin cotton shirt), and one clasping Steve's other hand.

“How close do we stand?” Steve asks, turning his gaze down to their feet, making sure his toes aren't bumping into James'.

“According to the woman who raised me, we need to leave enough room for Jesus,” James comments, “But disregarding that, it doesn't really matter. Just, close.”

He does pull Steve a little more closer (it isn't even that close, there's still a few inches between them). Steve blushes (just a little), but gets some form of determination on his face, holding is arms more straight.

“Arms loose,” James instructs. Steve nods.

“Anything else I should know?”

“Not really. Just follow my lead, and you should do fine.”

They dance for an hour, testing out different speeds and songs, (and they do, in fact, get tangled in Steve's oxygen tank tubes at least once).

A little over an hour in, several interesting things happen in the same five minute span.

Steve trips, and James catches him.

It's slightly awkward, because Steve more or less face-plants into James' chest, and James barely manages to catch him from sliding down to the floor.

“Sorry,” Steve stammers out, face turning bright red as he attempts to get a more solid stand on the ground, even with James' hands still on his arms.

“No worries,” James replies, “Besides, you look pretty cute when blushing.”

Steve gives James a look that can kill.

“ _James_ ,” he sighs.

“Bucky.”

And that takes both of them off guard.

“What?” Steve says, doing the head tilt thing again.

“Bucky,” he repeats. “Um, my middle name is Buchanan. And back when I was growing up, all my friends, anyone who was close to me, really, they'd call me Bucky. I'm just... I'm just saying that – if you want – you can call me Bucky. I never thought anyone would be close enough for me to let them call me that again, but, uh, you can call me that. If you want.”

Steve thinks for a moment, staring up at him for a minute.

He smiles.

“I like it,” he says. “Bucky.”

And it's a word that sounds so familiar and _like home_ , so fitting in Steve's deep voice.

Bucky smiles.

Bucky pulls Steve closer, ducks his head down, and kisses him.

Steve hesitates for just a moment before returning the kiss easily, just as enthusiastic as Bucky. He loops his arms around his neck so he can tug Bucky down further, even though he's already standing up on tiptoe.

Steve smells like vanilla and cheap laundry detergent, with a hint of something medical, and Bucky attempts to ignore the tubes still hooked up over Steve's ears that seem insistent on getting out of the way.

He backs up for just a moment.

“Those are necessary right now?” he says, barely able to breathe.

“Five minutes won't hurt,” Steve replies, tugging the tubes over his head, and dropping them on the nearby coffee table.

He returns back to Bucky swiftly, and kisses him again, deeper than the last.

Neither know how long they're standing there, but at some point Steve manages to back up and gasp out two words - “Bedroom, _now_.” - and Bucky lifts him up.

Steve hooks his legs around around Bucky's waist, and it barely seems a moment before the two find themselves on his bed, him lying on his back and Bucky hovering over him.

Steve grabs the hem of Bucky's shirt, and gives him a questioning look.

Bucky nods eagerly, and lets Steve help him out of his shirt.

By the more or less dazed look on Steve's face, Bucky can guess that he's more than happy about this development, but he doesn't think of it long.

He kisses Steve again, and he's about to ask where he keeps his condoms when a thought hits him.

And another.

_And another._

And although he wasn't even capable of thought just a few minutes ago, Bucky _can't stop thinking._

“Wait,” he says, taking in a deep breath of air. He props himself up on his hands, and Steve looks up at him through wide eyes.

“We can stop if this isn't what you want,” Steve says.

But the problem is, this is what Bucky wants.

He wants nothing more than to lean down and kiss Steve again, kiss him so hard Bucky forgets his own name, his life, his _everything_.

Because that's the problem.

He is not a good person.

His life has more than enough evidence to back that up.

How he met Steve even supports it.

He doesn't deserve Steve.

And Steve sure as hell doesn't deserve to be stuck with a wreck like him.

“I'm...” Bucky stammers out, thoughts still rushing around his head.

“Take your time,” Steve says, calmly.

“I'm not a good person,” Bucky blurts out. “I am a bad person, Steve.”

Steve nods.

“I am too,” he says, and maybe if Bucky was a little more clear-headed he'd notice the weight in Steve's words, and the deadly serious tone.

Bucky shakes his head, because no, _no_ , Steve can't be a bad person.

“That's... no. I'm...” he pauses again, before clearing his thoughts entirely.

He shuts his eyes tight, because he can't quite stand those blue eyes staring into him.

“I don't just break into apartments. I'm a fucking terrible person. I've killed people before.”

Steve doesn't speak for a very long time.

Bucky opens his eyes.

Steve has a pensive look on his face, the bliss from earlier completely forgotten.

He lifts a hand up, cupping Bucky's cheek.

When Steve speaks, it's barely audible. It's packed full of sorrow and sympathy, regret on top.

“I have too.”

* * *

Despite Steve calling up James and telling him he's too sick for date night, Steve's doorbell rings promptly at seven anyway.

Steve is half tempted to not move, because he feels like _shit_ and his sofa is far too comfortable to be leaving. He's already perfectly settled in under a bunch of blankets, his tea is cooling on the coffee table, and there's a Downton Abbey marathon running on TV.

He's more than happy to just remain in his blanket burrito for the rest of the night, but in a few more minutes, the doorbell rings again.

And again.

Steve doesn't feel like untangling himself from his blankets, nor putting in the effort it'd take to get to his door.

So, he yells.

“What?!” he shouts in the general direction of the door, after he mutes the TV (and this conversation better be brief because the commercial break is almost half over).

“Hey.”

Steve is split between wanting to roll his eyes and smile.

He just gets up instead. He shambles over to the front door quickly, oxygen cart trailing behind him, and opens up his front door.

“I thought I said we couldn't have a date tonight?” Steve says, glancing over James standing on his doorstep. His hair is tugged back in a messy bun at the back of his neck, and he's in just a gray long-sleeved shirt and jeans, a little less formal than how he usually dresses on date nights. So he must be here for something else, then. “I'd love to do something, but I feel like shit.”

“You said we couldn't _go out_ tonight,” James replies, “But you never said we couldn't have a night in.”

James looks smug as fuck, and Steve lets him in anyway.

“For the record, I was planning on doing nothing but watching TV for the rest of the night.”

And halfway through their second episode, James stands, saying that he 'got a sudden idea'.

Steve knows it's bullshit. He's been knowing James for long enough to know that he just doesn't get sudden ideas and rolls with them, most of the time every move James' makes is careful and deliberate.

So he plays along.

James flicks the TV off, and pushes the stand back, out of the way.

“What are you doing?” Steve asks, from his perch on the sofa.

“Making room,” is all that James replies with.

He moves the coffee table off to the side, towards the kitchen, and then motions for Steve to stand from the sofa.

“Why?” Steve asks, as he gets up. James pushes the sofa back to the wall, the end table shortly following it.

“Because, Steve,” he says, standing up and looking over the now large amount of space in the living room half of Steve's apartment. “I am going to teach you how to dance.”

Steve stares at James incredulously.

“Dance?”

“Yep,” James says, obviously excited.

“I don't dance.”

“Those words just mean you _can't_ dance. So I'm gonna teach you. It'll be fun.”

James pulls his phone out of his pocket, and begins searching for something on it, music, presumably.

“I can't dance, I'm sick,” Steve says, which is only one of the reasons as to why he doesn't want to dance.

He can think of a billion and a half more excuses right off the top of his head.

“I mean, you're kind of _always_ sick,” James says.

Which is more or less true.

“I'm tired.”

“So you can go to sleep, then.”

“Not that tired.”

“Dancing it is, then.”

He attempts a different approach.

“I have two left feet,” Steve says.

“And practice is the only thing that's gonna help that,” James rebuts.

Steve lands one one he thinks will work.

“I have to wear my oxygen tank because my lungs are shit and we'll just get tangled up,” he says, a hint of pride in his tone because that has to be a hard one to beat.

James thinks for a moment.

“I'm just teaching you the basics tonight,” he says triumphantly, after a moment, “So we won't be moving around too much, and not enough to get tangled.”

Steve lets out a frustrated sigh.

And dancing doesn't sound like such a bad idea at this point, but he doesn't feel like losing this particular argument, however un-argument like it may be.

“I'll probably wind up tripping over something and having to go to the hospital.”

“I'll catch you, and I drove my car here so if we do have to go to the hospital I have a way to get us there.

“I have no rhythm whatsoever.”

“Again, practice will help that.”

“I have never danced with anyone before-”

James cuts him off, lifting up a hand.

“Steve,” he says, voice sweet, “Shut up, we're doing this.”

He turns back down to his phone, and his head snaps back up a second later.

“Wait, really?”

Steve frowns.

“Really what?”

“You haven't ever danced with anyone before?”

Steve shakes his head.

“Nope,” he says, making it come out as if it doesn't really matter to him.

It does, actually.

“You didn't have a prom or anything like that?”

“Prom? In high school I was 'that tiny guy with the inhaler'. I barely had any friends, didn't really fit in, kind of the odd one out, actually.” Steve forces a smile, again playing it off as if it doesn't all matter. “Besides, I was barely five foot then. People aren't exactly lining up to dance with a guy they might step on.”

James stares at him for a moment, deep in thought.

“Okay, we are definitivelydoing this now,” he says.

He hits the play button on his phone, and an old jazz song that Steve only vaguely recognizes fills the air. James sets his phone down on the coffee table, and crosses the room, standing in front of Steve.

“This will be fun, I promise,” he says, before taking Steve's hands in his own, helping him get into the right position.

“Okay, put your hand on my shoulder – here, just like that.”

Steve places his hand on James's shoulder.

“The other one holding my hand like,” James pauses, as he fixes their hands right, “This, yeah, and we're good.”

“This is stupid,” Steve says, because it's easier to say that than to say he's actually getting kind of excited about this.

“No it isn't,” James answers, focusing more down at his feet than Steve, making sure everything is lined up perfectly.

“Yes it is,” Steve says.

“Steve, humor me.”

James looks back up at him, with wide eyes and a pout that surprisingly works well.

Steve rolls his eyes.

He sighs deeply.

He looks back at James.

“Fine.”

His inner sappy-romantic is _screaming_.

James practically beams at him.

Steve turns back down to the ground, if just to conceal his smile.

“How close do we stand?”

“According to the woman who raised me, we need to leave enough room for Jesus,” James says. Steve chuckles. “But disregarding that, it doesn't really matter. Just, close.”

James, using the hand he has around Steve's waist, pulls him a little bit closer. It catches him a bit off guard, and Steve finds himself blushing slightly at the feeling of James being so close, his fingers lightly pressing into his ribs, the smell of gunpowder and peppermint filling his senses.

Steve holds his arms a little tighter, becoming a little more awkward.

Not counting the time he fell on him and stole his wallet, this is the closest he's been to James for any decent length of time, and it's more than a little overwhelming.

“Arms straight,” James says.

Steve nods.

“Anything else I should know?”

“Not really. Just follow my lead, and you should do fine.”

And with that, they begin to move.

At first, Steve does feel the slightest bit silly. He's dancing in his pajamas to jazz songs that are older than he is, and he has absolutely _no clue what he's doing_. He's just following James' lead, which, considering that's what James says he's supposed to be doing, works.

He finds himself loosening up quite a bit as it goes on, getting the hang of it easily.

They're halfway through a faster song, Frank Sinatra singing brightly through James' phone's shitty speakers, when Steve trips over an uneven piece of his wooden floorboards.

He flails awkwardly forward for a second, but James catches him easily, wrapping his arms around him tightly to keep him from falling further.

“Sorry,” Steve stammers out, face growing red. He tries to get a more solid footing on the ground, and James keeps his hands on his arms to help him.

“No worries,” James says, before the smug look from earlier returns, “Besides, you look pretty cute when blushing.”

Steve scowls.

“ _James,_ ” he says with a sigh.

“Bucky.”

“What?”

Steve waits for him to answer, but it takes him a moment to sort out his thoughts.

“Bucky,” he repeats. “Um, my middle name is Buchanan. And back when I was growing up, all my friends, anyone who was close to me, really, they'd call me Bucky. I'm just... I'm just saying that – if you want – you can call me Bucky. I never thought anyone would be close enough for me to let them call me that again, but, uh, you can call me that. If you want.”

Steve looks him over.

Admittedly, the name 'James' had never been a perfect fit. It was his name though, and it worked, but looking at the man in front of him, Steve can tell that 'Bucky' would fit so much better.

Steve smiles.

“I like it,” he says, before testing the name out, “Bucky.”

Bucky smiles.

And Steve's hit with the sudden realization that outside of his picture on his drivers license, he's never actually seen Bucky smile before.

Bucky pulls Steve closer, and Steve nearly trips again, but he can't even think of that before Bucky ducks his head down and kisses him.

He's still a little caught up in names and smiles to realize what's happening for a split second, but when Steve does, he returns the kiss easily.

He loops his arms around Bucky's neck, tugging him closer.

Bucky ducks back for just a moment, completely out of breath.

“Those things are necessary right now?” he asks, referring to the tubes Steve's wearing.

“Five minutes won't hurt,” Steve replies. The oxygen concentrators in his rooms are still running, and he should be fine for a while. Worse comes to worst, he can always take his inhaler, but that's the last thing on his mind now.

He turns off the machine and takes off the tubes quickly, dropping them on his coffee table before turning back to to Bucky.

He's the one who instigates the kiss this time, and neither are sure how long they stay there.

“Bedroom, _now_ ,” Steve says, after a brief part for air, and Bucky's more than happy to comply. He picks Steve up and Steve locks his legs around his waist, and they head in the direction of his bedroom.

He's momentarily glad that he cleaned up a bit earlier, so when they land in the bed there's no danger of landing on a stray pencil or notebook.

And things seem about to progress even further – Bucky's shirt is gone and Steve's about to tell him that the condoms are in the top dresser drawer – when Bucky stops.

“Wait,” he says, after parting, propping himself up over Steve. He takes in a shaky breath.

Steve stares up at him in worry, wondering if he did anything wrong.

“We can stop if this isn't what you want,” he says, speaking carefully.

Bucky shakes his head, thoughts apparently all jumbled.

“I'm...” Bucky begins hesitantly, still searching for the right words.

“Take your time,” Steve says.

“I'm not a good person,” Bucky says, it all coming out in a rush, “I'm a bad person, Steve.”

And the thing is, Steve already knew this.

Good guys don't have metal arms and guns and knives and break into apartment buildings.

He's no saint, but he doesn't need to be told he's a sinner right now.

Bucky doesn't need to hear confirmation, he needs to know he's not alone.

Steve nods.

“I am too,” he says, because it's the truth.

And Bucky doesn't know much about him at all, so he probably doesn't believe it.

But it's the fucking truth.

“That's... no,” Bucky says. “I'm...”

Something shifts, and Bucky pauses entirely.

He shuts his eyes tight, unable to look back down at Steve.

“I don't just break into apartments. I'm a fucking terrible person. I've killed people before.”

Steve doesn't feel terrified.

He doesn't get a rush of ice down his spine, or the overwhelming urge to shove Bucky off of him and throw him out of his house.

Instead, he knows exactly how he feels.

He lifts a hand up, running it over Bucky's cheek and leaving it there.

Bucky opens his eyes, and waits patiently.

Steve tells him something he's terrified of telling anyone.

“I have too.”

* * *

Steve doesn't press. He hasn't told anyone that before, but he has told a censored version of the story to two people before. They hadn't pressed for details, and that is something he doesn't take for granted. Bucky deserves his privacy, and if he wants to open up, he'll do it when he's ready.

Bucky doesn't press. He wants to, but there's something so broken in Steve's voice that he can't bring himself to ask anything that might make old memories stir.

Bucky moves off of Steve, and lays beside him. After a few minutes, a silent mutual agreement, Steve turns out the light, and they get under the covers.

Some point around three am, Steve grabs Bucky's hand.

“We'll talk tomorrow,” he says, and Bucky replies with softly squeezing Steve's hand.

Neither of them sleep that night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is definitely one of my favorite chapters out of the whole thing. It was so much fun to write.  
> And I really love dropping cliffhangers like that.  
> Those are fun too.  
> B)


	10. "It's A Long Story."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Steve, we need to talk. About last night.”  
> “We do,” Steve says, and then he turns back to the eggs. “We'll talk when the foods done. How do you like your eggs?”

Steve pulls himself out of bed around nine in the morning.

Bucky's still in his bed, eyes shut and asleep, but looking utterly exhausted. Steve himself didn't sleep at all, but he's used to running on nothing.

He stands up on shaky legs, and makes his way out of his room after grabbing his glasses, making sure to be quiet. He shuts the door behind him, and hopes Bucky would get some more rest than he did.

Once he reaches his living room, he slips back on the tubes for his oxygen tank, and then wheels it over to his kitchen.

He needs three things.

Tea, eggs, waffles.

He deals with the waffles first, an old recipe of his mother's that he has memorized. While they're cooking in the waffle maker, he then puts the kettle on, and then begins the eggs.

Bucky walks into the room a few minutes later, with bleary eyes and messy hair.

“Morning,” he says, pausing in front of the kitchen island.

“Hey,” Steve says, looking over at him. “Did you get any sleep?”

Bucky shrugs.

“A few hours. Did you?”

Steve shakes his head.

“Not at all.”

Bucky quirks up an eyebrow.

“That can't be healthy.”

“I'm good at pulling all nighters, I'll be fine. I'll take a nap later if I need to.”

Bucky nods.

“How are you feeling? Like, still sick?”

Steve shrugs.

“I kinda have a headache, and breathing's a little bit rough – I'll probably have to take a breathing treatment later – and I'm kinda achy. But nothing's really wrong. Don't worry.”

Bucky nods again, leaning on the island, before a pensive look crosses his features.

“Steve, we need to talk. About last night.”

“We do,” Steve says, and then he turns back to the eggs. “We'll talk when the foods done. How do you like your eggs?”

“Fried.”

“What kind of tea do you want?”

“Chamomile.”

“Alrighty. Should be done in a bit.”

Steve doesn't look up from his stove, but he can hear Bucky shifting around the room, before moving the furniture back into place.

“We'll have to dance again sometime,” Steve says, before flipping over the eggs, “That was fun.”

“It was,” Bucky says, and Steve can practically hear the smile in his voice.

Eventually, Steve heads over to the coffee table, setting down two plates of food, while Bucky grabs the tea from the kitchen counter.

They settle on Steve's sofa, Steve sitting crosslegged, resting his back on the armrest of the sofa, facing Bucky.

“So,” Steve begins, holding his mug tightly. “You probably have questions.”

“So do you,” Bucky says.

Steve decides to be blunt.

“I don't really want to talk about what happened with me. It's a long story. It still kinda sticks with me, y'know, and I can't really think about it without getting anxious as fuck. I... I wasn't really in control then, hurting people wasn't a choice that I consciously made. It's a hard thing for me to talk about, and I haven't really told the full story to anyone. It's something I hate to think about.”

He takes a sip of his tea, and watches Bucky carefully.

“But if you want to know, I'll tell you.”

And he leaves the decision in his hands.

Bucky frowns down at his eggs and waffles, deep in thought.

“I'm not going to lie,” he says, slowly, “I do want to know. But you don't have to tell me. I completely understand about not wanting to think about it, that's how it feels with me. And if you ever want to tell me, I'd like it to be because you want to tell me, not just because I want to hear.”

Steve smiles tiredly.

“Thank you,” he says, admittedly happy that Bucky let him out of an explanation.

He has no doubt he's going to tell Bucky someday.

But hopefully not for a while.

With Stark taking The Sketchbook, and meeting Peggy and Bruce again, it's all been heavy on his mind lately. He hasn't slept right in days, and he's feeling a little to close to it all again to tell the story clearly.

He's going to tell Bucky someday.

But not for a long time, hopefully.

Bucky lets out a frustrated sigh, and turns to him.

“I should explain, though,” he says, and before Steve can say anything he launches into an explanation. “It's not just breaking into apartments. I do that, and I do break into other places, not just apartments, and I steal stuff and I get information. And, a few years ago, I used to do hits too. I killed people. I never did anyone who's innocent, and most of my kills prevented worse things from happening. I'm always selective about my jobs, and I do my research and never once hurt someone who's innocent, but still.”

Steve nods.

And it's the slightest bit surprising that Bucky is a killer, because he certainly doesn't seem like it.

Steve figures that he doesn't seem like one either.

But either way, he's going to act calm about this.

“Do you regret it?” he asks, again deciding to be blunt.

Bucky glances back down to his food.

“Most of them, yes. Some, no. Those were the people who could have really ruined things. I don't regret those. If they were alive, a lot more worse things could have happened.”

“Alright,” Steve says, “And are you currently still... um... offering that particular service?”

Bucky shakes his head.

“No. I haven't killed anyone in almost two years. I am not going to again.”

“Okay,” Steve says.

Bucky pauses for a moment, setting down his food on the coffee table in front of him, before turning back to Steve.

“You're... you're being really calm about all of this,” he says carefully, sounding the slightest bit confused.

Steve shrugs.

“I've known people who've done terrible things. My old best fri-” he stops that immediately, and clears his throat and moves on. “Nevermind that. Just, I've known people who've done bad things. And I, myself, have done some bad things. You said you regret murdering people, and that you're not planning on doing it again, and I trust you.”

“Really?”

Steve allows himself to smile, and rolls his eyes.

“Bucky, are you planning on murdering me at any point?” he asks, making sure it's obvious that he's teasing.

“Nope,” Bucky answers lightly.

“Good,” Steve says, and they more or less decide to end that particular conversation with that.

Steve isn't going to pry any further, and neither is Bucky.

They continue eating, making small talk over their waffles and eggs, lingering over their tea far longer than necessary.

“So, what are you planning on doing today?” Steve asks. “I'm not kicking you out or anything, you can hang out here if you want.”

Bucky shrugs.

“I'm expecting a phone call later – work related – but other than that, I didn't really have any plans today.”

“So you wanna stay for a while?” Steve asks, “Watch some more Downton Abbey?”

And that's what they do, crash on Steve's sofa and do nothing but watch TV for a couple hours.

They both ignore the conversation from last night, and Steve dozes off on Bucky's shoulder several times.

Bucky doesn't mind.

* * *

Bucky wakes up later that he usually sleeps, and finds himself in a bed that isn't his own.

In a few minutes it all hits him.

Dancing.

Kissing.

“ _I have too._ ”

Bucky jerks up into a sitting position, and finds he's alone in Steve's bed.

There's the smell of food dancing through the air, and so Bucky heads to the kitchen.

He's still in his jeans, and he grabs his shirt from where it was tossed last night, slipping it on as he leaves the bedroom.

Steve's busy in his kitchen. The kettle's on the stove and he's hovering over a pan, while the waffle maker next to him makes occasional sizzling noises.

“Morning,” Bucky says, pausing in front of the kitchen island.

Steve glances up from the food, and smiles.

“Hey. Did you get any sleep?”

Bucky shrugs. He did get some rest, but none of it was very good.

“A few hours. Did you?”

Steve shakes his head lightly, messy blonde hair shaking slightly.

“Not at all,” he says easily.

Bucky raises an eyebrow. Especially considering Steve's sicker – than usual – that's probably not a good thing.

“That can't be healthy.”

“I'm good at pulling all nighters, I'll be fine. I'll Take a nap later if I need to.”

“How are you feeling? Like, still sick?” Bucky asks.

“I kinda have a headache, and breathing's a little bit rough – I'll probably have to take a breathing treatment later – and I'm kinda achy. But nothing's really wrong. Don't worry.”

Bucky nods, even though he's planning on worrying anyway. Honestly, he can't remember when he  _didn't_ worry about Steve after meeting him. It seems he's always sick in one way or another, or getting into fights or such.

The events of last night rush back to him.

That weight in Steve's voice, the complete tiredness in his eyes, the three words that brought he night crashing down around them.

“Steve,” Bucky says carefully, “We need to talk. About last night.”

Steve frowns just a little, but nods. “We do.”

And then he turns back to the stove, away from Bucky.

“We'll talk when the food's done,” he says tightly, leaving no room for protest, “How do you like your eggs?”

He's putting off the inevitable, but Bucky lets him.

“Fried.”

“What kind of tea do you want?”

“Chamomile.”

“Alrighty, should be done in a bit.”

He doesn't speak anymore, so Bucky turns from the kitchen, to face the living room. Everything's just how they left it last night, furniture pushed against the walls.

Bucky shifts the nightstand into place first, and then the sofa.

“We'll have to dance again sometime. That was fun,” Steve says, not turning from his eggs.

Bucky grins.

He knew Steve would love it.

“It was,” he agrees.

By the time Steve has the food finished and plated, Bucky has the furniture in the right spots.

Steve brings the food over, Bucky brings the tea over, and Steve winds up kicking off the conversation none of them really want to have.

“So,” Steve says, fingers tightening around his mug in the way he does when he's particularly nervous, “You probably have questions.”

And, oh _god_ , Bucky does.

In fact, he can think of a dozen in a split second, but since he himself doesn't want to be bombarded with questions, he figures it's the same for Steve.

“So do you,” Bucky replies, not even turning it into a question, because he already knows.

He's curious about Steve's past.

And Steve's curious about his.

“I don't really want to talk about what happened with me. It still kinda sticks with me, y'know, and I can't really think about it without getting anxious as fuck. I... I wasn't really in control then, hurting people wasn't a choice that I consciously made. It's a hard thing for me to talk about, and I haven't really told the full story to anyone. It's something I hate to think about.”

Just by the way Steve's shoulders are turned in, his knuckles going white around his mug, glancing slightly to Bucky's right instead of looking at him straight on, Bucky can tell he's on edge.

Steve takes a careful sip of his tea, and glances back to Bucky, watching through wide blue eyes.

“But if you want to know, I'll tell you.”

Bucky simply stares at Steve for a moment.

On one hand, he wants to say yes, he wants to hear _everything_ and know Steve better for it. He wants to know.

But then, he isn't going to give his boyfriend a panic attack over some simple curiosity.

He frowns down at his food, and speaks slowly.

“I'm not going to lie, I do want to know. But you don't have to tell me. I completely understand about not wanting to think about it, that's how it feels with me. And if you ever want to tell me, I'd like it to be because you want to tell me, not just because I want to hear.”

When he looks back up again, Steve's smiling.

And the smile is fairly faint, but there's easiness in his eyes, and his shoulders are slumped and his knuckles aren't white anymore.

He's relieved.

“Thank you,” he breathes out, and Bucky has no doubt he made the right choice.

And maybe that could have been the end of it, but Bucky knows Steve has to be just as curious as he is.

Steve explained that he wasn't in control.

But Bucky was.

Steve deserves to know that.

He lets out a sigh, and turns to him.

“I should explain, though,” he says, voice suddenly dry.

And maybe this will scare Steve off and maybe it'll ruin everything, but he deserves to know.

“It's not just breaking into apartments. I do that, and I do break into other places, not just apartments, and I steal stuff and I get information. And, a few years ago, I used to do hits too. I killed people. I never did anyone who's innocent, and most of my kills prevented worse things from happening. I'm always selective about my jobs, and I do my research and never once hurt someone who's innocent, but still.”

Steve nods, after a moment, face unreadable for the moment.

Bucky gets a little bit anxious, but he doesn't allow it to show.

“Do you regret it?” Steve asks, cutting right to the chase.

Generally Bucky appreciates not beating around bushes, but he's been unsure of a lot of things lately.

He glances back down at his food, because half cold waffles are easier to look at than Steve at the moment.

There are some hits that he'd do a thousand times over again.

But there were some he'd trade his life to take back.

And his hands are shaking slightly, so he forces himself not to think of people who used to have lives ahead of them that are now six feet under.

“Most of them, yes. Some, no. Those were the people who could have really ruined things. I don't regret those. If they were alive, a lot more worse things could have happened.”

Steve nods again.

“Alright.” He hesitates for just a moment. “And are you currently still... um... offering that particular service?”

Bucky shakes his head.

“No. I haven't killed anyone in almost two years. I am not going to again.”

That's the truth, plain and simple.

“Okay,” Steve says, and that's all he says.

Which is slightly unnerving.

Bucky sets down his plate, and angles himself in the sofa to face Steve better.

“You're.. you're being really calm about all of this,” he says. He isn't quite sure how people generally react when finding out their boyfriend is an ex-hitman, but he's fairly certain this isn't it.

Steve shrugs.

“I've known people who've done terrible things. My old best fri-”

Steve _freezes_.

Something akin to horror or regret crosses his face for a split second, him catching on his words, and it's gone as soon as it came.

He shifts into forced impassiveness, and clears his throat.

“Nevermind that. Just, I've known people who've done bad things. And I, myself, have done some bad things. You said you regret murdering people, and that you're not planning on doing it again, and I trust you.”

“Really?” Bucky asks, and he's half glad that Steve doesn't hate him, and he's half sad that Steve had such bad friends that this doesn't even faze him.

Steve smiles, and rolls his eyes.

“Bucky, are you planning on murdering me at any point?” he asks, quite obviously teasing.

“Nope,” Bucky answers instantly.

“Good,” Steve says, and with that comes the mutual agreement that the conversation is over.

They turn back to lukewarm tea and half cold eggs, and make small talk about friends and TV over the remnants of their breakfast.

“So,” Steve eventually asks, “What are you planning on doing today? I'm not kicking you out or anything, you can hang out here if you want.”

Bucky shrugs.

He's heard rumors, a few hints from some friends in the business, that he's going to be getting some work soon. And although Steve is apparently okay with the milder forms of his work, Bucky would prefer not to arrange illegal business in front of his boyfriend.

“I'm expecting a phone call later – work related – but other than that, I didn't really have any plans today.”

“So you wanna stay for a while? Watch some more Downton Abbey?” Steve asks eagerly.

“Sure,” Bucky answers, and Steve grabs the remote.

They go through two and a half episodes before Steve falls asleep on Bucky's shoulder.

Bucky can't help but smile, because Steve genuinely appears consent when asleep. His pale blond hair is flopping over his eyes, and his breathing occasionally hitches. He's so small Bucky barely feels him on his shoulder, and Bucky can't help but smile at how well they fit together when he puts an arm around his shoulders.

He's half tempted to fall asleep with him, and nearly does doze off a few times.

He's half-asleep and the dvd is playing the menu song on loop, when his phone rings.

Bucky manages to untangle himself from Steve, and lays him down on the sofa, placing a blanket over him before moving over to the kitchen.

The number calling is vaguely familiar, but not one in his contacts, so it can't be a regular.

Bucky answers.

“Winter Soldier,” is all he says. He only cringes a little. The name wasn't his own choice, it sprang from rumors and just stuck. Others appear to find it scary, though, so Bucky uses it.

He thinks over it for just a moment before the person on the other end of the line speaks.

“This is Tony Stark. I have another job for you, if you're interested.”

* * *

Steve wakes up a little later.

Bucky's no where in his apartment.

There's a note on the white board on his fridge.

'Had to go, work stuff. See you soon <3'.

Steve smiles.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm unsure if I'll be able to update next week.  
> I'm going on a trip with a youth group I go to, and we're leaving next Thursday. Updating from my phone takes a good while, and I'll probably be too busy to do so Friday.  
> I'll try to update next Thursday before I go, if I have the time and don't have to leave hella early. If I don't get the chance, I'll post a chapter as soon as I get back, and continue with updating on Fridays.  
> Anyway, as always, hope you enjoyed the chapter!!


	11. Crashing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky isn't sure how long he sits there, staring down at his phone.  
> And it could be minutes or it could be hours, but eventually he types out a short text.  
> Steve, we need to talk. I'm going to come over.  
> He hits send, squares his shoulders, and leaves his apartment.

Bucky promptly hangs up on Stark.

He hits the end call button without a second thought.

He scribbles out a note for Steve, making it seem lighthearted except for the slight tremor in his handwriting, and leaves Steve's apartment.

And he rushes down Steve's hall, out the door, through the streets, and he doesn't stop until he hits home.

He sits down on his sofa, and stares at his phone.

And his hands are shaking, even the metal one, and he can't stop thinking and this might be the closest thing he's had to an anxiety attack in years.

Because follow up missions mean two things.

They want _more,_ Stark wants another sketchbook or something else of Steve's or _something_ and he can't work for Stark again, he can't.

Or, they want an _end_.

And Bucky sure as hell isn't going to _ever_ put a bullet in between Steve's eyes, no matter the amount of money he's offered.

He's thinking and he's stressing _and his phone rings_.

Bucky lets it ring several times, before hitting the answer call button.

He'll listen.

He'll decline.

He'll change his number.

He'll never tell Steve.

“You hung up on me,” Stark says, voice sounding the slightest bit annoyed over the line.

“My phone died,” Bucky says, slipping into a lie easily, speaking through gritted teeth, “Sorry.”

“Right. Anyway, new job. Pay will be double what you got for the last one. Yes or no?”

“That depends on what the job is,” Bucky says.

Stark pauses for a moment.

“Steve Rogers,” he says, “The man you stole the sketchbook from for me?”

“I remember him, yes.”

“I need you to kidnap him for me.”

Bucky's heart stops for the second time that day.

Stark continues.

“Well, sort of. I want you to talk to him first, see if you can intimidate him into seeing me. He won't answer my phone calls, texts, anything, I just... I need to see him and I'm grasping at straws here.”

And there's a hint of something, _something_ , maybe it's irritation.

But it sounds a hell of a lot more like sadness.

Bucky steels himself, and clears his throat.

“What if he declines?” he asks, because Stark doesn't seem the one to take 'no' for an answer, and that does mildly terrify him.

“Then I want you to bring him here,” Stark says bluntly. “Not anything rough and not anything terrifying. He has anxiety and if he gets a panic attack, I'm not paying you. If there's a single bruise on him, I'm making sure that you're never going to get a job ever again, okay? You hurt him, I'll give you hell, got it?”

Bucky doesn't answer.

Stark lets out a sigh.

“I know this sounds creepy, but, fuck, you're a hitman, you've probably done worse things. I just... I need to see him. I can fix things if I can just _talk_ to him. So, if he doesn't agree to come on his own, I want you to bring him to me. That's it, that's the job.”

Bucky frowns, and chooses his next words carefully.

From what he can tell, Stark doesn't know that he's in a relationship with Steve. He doesn't know that Bucky has interacted with him any more than the night he stole the sketchbook.

And he intends to keep it that way.

He doesn't know the deal with Stark, but he could be a stalker or an ex or anything, really, and he isn't going to tell him something that would make things worse.

Whatever happened between him and Steve, Steve seems like he's moved on.

And from what Bucky knows, people like Stark don't take it kindly when people move on.

So he speaks carefully.

“What are you intending to do with the target?” he says, and he hates referring to Steve with technical terms, it feels _wrong_.

“Is that relevant?” Stark asks bluntly.

“I don't do murders. I don't do anything sexual. I don't do torture. And, by extension, I do not deliver targets to people who do those things.”

“I like you,” Stark comments casually, “Ethics are rare in your line of work. And I'm not going to murder him, or do anything sexual with him, or torture him. I simply want to talk to him.”

And he sounds _honest_.

But Bucky's predisposed to distrust him, and so all he makes is a small noise of acknowledgment.

“So, are you going to take the job? I need to know, because if you aren't, I'll have to find someone who will.”

Bucky feels like his veins turn to ice.

Because he knows other people in his line of work, and despite Stark's vague threats, there are more than enough people who would take the job, and hurt Steve in the process.

And Bucky _isn't going to let that happen_.

“I need some time to consider,” he says, feigning professionalism even though he wants nothing more than to break down, or yell, or argue. “I will have an answer later tonight.”

“Good.”

Stark hangs up this time.

Bucky isn't sure how long he sits there, staring down at his phone.

And it could be minutes or it could be hours, but eventually he types out a short text.

_Steve, we need to talk_ .  _I'm going to come over._

He hits send, squares his shoulders, and leaves his apartment.

* * *

Something is wrong.

Bucky seems on edge, and if something is bothering him enough for him to show it, something is  _very wrong_ .

“Steve,” he says, and he sounds like a calamity of emotions, unlike his usual careful words, “You should probably sit down for this.”

Steve frowns for a second, but follows Bucky's lead. Bucky sits down on his sofa, and he takes the armchair.

“What's wrong?” he asks, and Bucky looks even more on edge.

He stills, lets out a sigh, and face Steve.

“Tony Stark called me.”

For just a moment, he can't even process it.

He sits there, with wide eyes and a confused look gracing his features.

He called Bucky.

_Stark called Bucky._

He swallows thickly, and he clutches his hands tight together so they won't shake.

“W-why?” he stutters out, voice shaky and quiet.

Bucky looks almost as anxious as he feels, but speaks quickly.

“He told me that he wants me to intimidate you into seeing him again. If that fails, he wants me to bring you to him.”

Something tears inside of Steve, and lets out all the pent up anxiety that's been in him since the night Bucky first took the sketchbook, since Stark's first attempt at getting back into his life.

His vision blurs slightly and he can't focus, can't think,  _can't breathe._

“Y-you w-wouldn't do that, w-would you?” he says, barely audible, keeping his eyes fixed on Bucky.

And on some level Steve knows that Bucky wouldn't, but there's the small haunting thought in the back of his mind that maybe everything in these past few months has been _fake_.

Something fake, a play, a plan, a way for Stark to get to him, _a lie_.

And Steve is shaking slightly and Bucky's watching him closely and he's kind of terrified and he can't think anymore because Bucky speaks.

“Steve.” Bucky frowns, and edges closer, and Steve has to force himself not to flinch, “Steve. I swear to god, I am not going to do anything you don't want me to do.”

Steve nods, and Bucky grabs one of his shaking hands, clasping it in his larger ones.

“I care about you, okay? And I am never going to hurt you.”

Steve nods, and attempts to shove doubts out of his mind.

“He said that if I don't agree, though, then he'll get someone else to do it.”

“Oh,” Steve says, that's all he can think to say.

Bucky continues.

“Here are your options,” he says gently, “You can see him. I'll go with you, and you'll never be alone during it. Or, we run. I've ditched plenty of places before, I know how to disappear. And since he seems insistent on seeing you, he won't stop if you say no. So we either face it, or leave.”

Steve shakes his head.

“H-he'll find me. I moved before and he found m-me again, and he'll just l-look and find me again and r-running sounds nice but we can't.”

Bucky nods, and Steve tries just to focus on him.

His life seems to be crashing straight down around his shoulders.

“So,” Bucky says, letting the word trail off.

Steve grips onto his hands tighter.

“T-there's no way out of it,” he says, quietly.

Bucky moves even closer, and tugs back one of his hands to cup Steve's cheek.

“Steve, _breathe._ ”

Steve forces himself to take in a shaky, wheezing breath, and attempts to turn his breathing back to normal.

“Look. I'll be right there with you throughout the entire thing. I don't have to leave you at all, if you want. And, if he steps wrong, if he does anything to hurt you, I'll take care of it, okay?”

And Steve doesn't know if he's implying he'll hurt him, or kill him, or something else.

Maybe, but he'll never admit it to himself, he doesn't want Stark to wind up dead.

But all he focuses on that Bucky's promising to help him through this.

Steve crosses over from the armchair to the sofa quickly, and curls up next to Bucky.

“Okay,” is all he says.

It takes a while for his breathing to right itself, and even longer for his thoughts to clear, but the weight of anxiety in his chest doesn't lighten at all.

Bucky wraps an arm around him and pulls him closer.

They remain like that for a very long time.

* * *

Bucky crosses over to the kitchen to make the phone call, and Steve watches him.

He can only hear one half of the conversation.

A few minutes later, Bucky sets his phone down, and turns to Steve.

“Tomorrow night.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back from my trip, and here's a chapter!  
> I'll also be updating on Friday, and updates should go back to regular from then on out.


	12. The Meeting.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's standing behind his desk, and for a split second, he looks anxious.  
> Steve stands by the door, and Tony stares at him.  
> Tony smiles, a sad, half smile.  
> “It's been too fucking long,” he says, with a voice that's half of regret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a bit different, due to the big events going on, it's only from Steve's POV.

Stark Tower is a tall and glowing building in the heart of New York.

It always has people bustling about, scientists and secretaries and security guards, and, if you're lucky, you might just catch a glimpse of Tony Stark himself. His appearances has been rare as of late, but people were still always hanging around the building, itching to see the playboy scientist.

In the past thirty years, Stark Industries grew to be one of the most renowned companies in the world, first hinging on weapon creation, now solely on science. Even after the the death of Howard Stark, and the subsequent inheritance of his company by his son Tony Stark, business boomed.

Most people, when staring up at the looming building, the name Stark highlighting the sky above in glowing letters, they felt a sense of awe. A feeling of _newness_. A buzz of excitement.

Steve Rogers feels terror.

Stark Tower is completely dead.

There's no one moving around, not even the late night scientists or graveyard shift security guards. Even the lights hovering high seemed a bit dimmer, but Steve put that down as his imagination.

“He said he'd be in his office,” Bucky says. He's dressed in his 'work clothes', the same clothes that he wore the night he met Steve. His voice comes out slightly muffled underneath his mask, and he looks like a completely different person.

He has his guns and his knives, and his stance shows that he's right on edge. And although Steve knows that the way Stark has it planned, he should be the one being scared of Bucky, but Bucky's threatening appearance is entirely directed towards Stark.

“Top floor,” Steve says. Bucky doesn't ask how he knows this, but he does give him one worried look.

Steve looks like a mess.

There's dark purple bags under his eyes from the night before, where he didn't sleep a wink, and he looks even paler than usual. There's a set expression on his face, features half tugged into a frown, but the trembling of his shoulders give him away.

“It's not to late to run,” Bucky says.

Steve squares his shoulders.

“No.”

And that's all he says, before marching forward, and pushing into the front door of the Tower.

The air inside is stiff, stiffer than the last time Steve's been here, years ago. The only lights that are on are the ones needed for them to see their way to the elevator across the lobby.

“Security cams,” Steve says quietly, making sure to angle his face away from the camera tucked into a high corner. “Don't let him know I know you. No more talking after this.”

Bucky nods almost imperceptibly.

In a heartbeat, he seems to shift to a different person entirely, posture and the general air around him changing. He seems looser, in a way, radiating more confidence and capability.

Him and Steve make it to the end of the lobby, and onto the elevator.

The Tower is a stunning ninety-three stories tall, and Steve taps the button for the top floor.

To prevent just anyone from coming up to Stark's personal office, everyone who hits the button has a small security check, and needs approval from security or Stark himself for the elevator to move.

It begins to rise a moment later.

The ride up is grueling. The elevator rides so smoothly that it barely feels like they're moving. The floors tick away like heartbeats, and before Steve can make the shaking in his hands stop, he's at the top.

The elevator opens up into a long, thin hallway. On the left is Stark's office, the door to which is at the other end of the hall, and to the right is his lab.

Steve keeps his eyes focused left, because if he turns to the right, he'll loose any composure he has.

The elevator doors shutting behind the two of them feel kind of like a death sentence.

Steve frowns.

He knows he isn't going to die.

Stark would never do that.

To be quite honest, he doesn't know what the fuck Stark wants.

But he does know that he occasionally gets an invitation to some form of party, or a letter, or a package, all with Stark's name on them.

And they all go right in the trash.

He gets phone calls and emails and texts.

And he's changed his number three times, and his email seven.

Stark has something to say.

Steve's going to walk in, let him say his piece, and then he's _done._

He plans on telling him that.

And Steve knows a little about 'Tony Stark', the idea that the media projects, and he knows about 'Stark', the man who hasn't let what's already dead to lay at rest.

But at the base of it, he knows Tony.

He knows things about Tony no one else has any idea about. He's seen slices of his life that even Tony doesn't remember.

He knows him.

Stark maybe be impulsive and obsessive, but Tony is, at heart, a good man.

All Steve has to do is tell _Tony_ to stop, and he will.

And maybe the only reason Steve hasn't told him already was because that would mean it ending. A solid cut off from the life he used to have to what he has now.

But, despite memories of play-dates, teenage hang outs, double dates, college, laughing at everything, crying at funerals, science experiments, Steve is ready for it to end.

He doesn't need a reminder of his past happiness, he needs for it to be shut, locked, forgotten about. He needs that so he can move on.

This all floats through his head in the few seconds it takes to get to the end of the hall.

He pauses outside of the door for just a second.

Just long enough to erase the scowl from his face, and shift into something neutral.

Steve takes in a deep breath, grips the handle of his oxygen cart, and walks into the room.

It's different, but the same.

The carpet and wall paper are different, but the desk is still Tony's dad's old one, and there's still the wall of windows behind it, framing the bright lights of the city.

Tony's standing behind his desk, and for a split second, he looks anxious.

Steve stands by the door, and Tony stares at him.

Tony smiles, a sad, half smile.

“It's been too fucking long,” he says, with a voice that's half of regret.

He looks older. There's lines etched into his face, and although he isn't much older than Steve, he certainly looks so.

“Maybe not long enough,” Steve says, tilting his chin a little higher.

Tony chuckles.

“Y'know, it's kind of sad that I had to hire a guy to kidnap you, just so I can see my best friend.”

Steve moves into the room, and Bucky shuts the door behind them, staying by it as Steve gets closer to the desk.

“We haven't talked in four years. We aren't best friends anymore,” Steve says, attempting to keep his voice even. He's halfway to crying and halfway to yelling, but attempts to keep himself in check.

“Correction,” Tony says, which springs back a dozen memories, because Tony used to always correct Steve, “I have been talking to you. You just haven't been talking back.”

“And most people would take that as a sign to stop talking.”

“You know me Steve, always persistent.”

This is how it used to be, Steve thinks. The conversation almost sounds like an echo. His and Tony's friendship was half built on sarcastic comments, back then.

And although he doesn't want to admit it, seeing Tony again feels almost like going back home.

Steve ignores that.

“Just tell me what you have to say,” he says, voice deadly serious, “And after that, I'm done. You are going to stop calling me, and we are never going to see each other again.”

Tony doesn't look mad, like Steve expected.

He looks hurt.

“What?” he half demands.

“I want to be done with this, Tony,” Steve says, composure slipping just a little exposing the tiredness in his voice, “What happened is never going to leave me, but I want to be done with it. I don't want to talk about it, and I don't want you to talk about it to me.”

“Holy shit,” Tony says, voice incredulous. He moves from around the desk, to stand in front of Steve. Steve squares his shoulders, and stands a little bit taller. “I get you wanting to move on from the Project, but from me? Steve, we fucking grew up together. We were best friends-”

“Don't,” Steve snaps. “You had your chance after, and you ruined it. I don't care if you're trying to apologize, it's too late for that.”

“Everything I've ever done has been an apology!” Tony snaps back, “Every fucking thing, every text and letter and call, it's all been to fix things! You just never listened!”

Steve _breaks._

Years of pent up anger and depression come up.

He steps closer to Tony, invading his personal space, a pure look of anger settling on his face.

“Do you have any fucking idea what you did to me?” he says, voice going deathly quiet, “I can't fucking breathe on my own. Almost every doctor I've seen says I'm going to die in less than thirty years, some aren't even that hopeful. I have anxiety like _hell_.”

Tony opens his mouth, but Steve continues.

“And you know what? Half a billion dollars into my bank account, without a word, that isn't a fucking apology. That's _pity._ Every single thing you've ever done for me has just been fucking pity! 'I'm forced into interact with the poor sick kid, may as well make him my own little pet project!' That's all it ever was, wasn't it? You never even got the idea for the fucking Project until after Mom died.”

Steve takes in a breath, and ignores the tears pricking up at the corners of his eyes.

“You never once gave me an apology. All I ever got from you was bribes and fucking pity, and I'm so goddamn tired of it!”

“I never pitied you! I was just fucking worried, and I tried to help bu-”

“Throwing yourself into your work and completely ignoring me when I needed you wasn't fucking helping! Giving me money and acting like that was all I needed wasn't help. Fucking buying my house so I'd have to move to a better place didn't fucking help at all!”

Steve's quite obviously crying now, tears running straight down his cheeks, and Tony looks as if he's about to join him.

“I bought it so you would be  _ safe _ . That house was a wreck, the place was a bad area and you could have gotten hurt and you know that living there fucked with your anxiety!”

“That was where I,  _ we _ grew up, Tony. That place was  _ home _ . That was where my mom lived and died and it was where I wanted to live and die, and you fucking took that from me! You can't just steal my house, accidentally make me sick mentally and physically, ignore me for months, and then just try to act like we're still friends! You left me, and then you pitied me, and I'm just so fucking done with it.”

Tony scowls. Bucky's hand hovers over his gun, but he continues watching.

“I never pitied you. It was fucking compassion. I ruined your life. Me, Bruce, Peggy, Pepper, we all fucking ruined things for you! I completely fucked up your life! Every goddamn thing I did, everything I've done since then, it's all been to fix it! You we're literally the most important person in my life, Steve, and you honestly think I just gave up on you?”

Steve swallows thickly, and he can't tell if he's shivering from rage or anxiety. He doesn't speak, he just stares up at Tony expectantly.

Tony lets out a huff of air, and takes a second to calm himself.

“When was the last time you saw me in the news?” he says, once he regains his composure.

“Last week,” Steve answers, unsure of where Tony is going with this, but going with it. Tony doesn't just have meaningless conversations, there has to be a reason for everything. “You were at a charity thing.”

“Last time, product related,” Tony clarifies.

Steve goes to think.

He can remember when Tony was releasing a product week after week, making headlines every other day.

He can't remember the last time he heard a product announcement.

“I don't know,” he says.

“That's because I haven't been working on anything,” Tony says, “Because I've been focusing on one thing, the same fucking thing for the past few years.”

Steve suddenly realizes.

His throat seems to lock up, and the air in his lungs go out in a rush.

Tony continues.

“All trials have went amazingly. Took me years, but it's done. It's ready. It fucking works.”

Tony pauses for just a moment, taking in Steve's half-terrified reaction, and says ten more words.

“I remade the serum. It's yours, if you want it.”

Steve can't fucking breathe.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep. Big events... big events.


	13. Burning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I've done small scale trials, observed them carefully this time, I've tested over and over, changed dozens of things. It works now. No issues as far as I've seen.”
> 
> Tony smiles, nearly beaming.
> 
> “It works, Steve, it finally fucking works.”
> 
> Steve stares at him.

 Bucky's about to take a step towards Steve, when Stark, no, Tony, does it for him.

He still has his hand poised over his gun, watching the scene splayed out before him with narrow eyes, but he doesn't move yet.

Tony steps closer, and does something that looks like an attempt to be comforting.

“I've done small scale trials, observed them carefully this time, I've tested over and over, changed dozens of things. It works now. No issues as far as I've seen.”

Tony smiles, nearly beaming.

“It works, Steve, it finally fucking _works_.”

Steve stares at him.

Bucky can't really see much from his point at the door, but he has no doubt that Steve's eyes are wide, and by the way he isn't talking, something has to be wrong.

Tony gets a knowing look on his face, smile turning sadder.

“I understand,” is all he says. He places a hand on Steve's shoulder, and it's more or less obvious he's trying to restrain himself from hugging the smaller man, “Look. You have my number, know where I live, all that. Think about it. Talk to me in a few weeks, months, hell, however long you need. I finally found a way to fix all of this, just let me know if you're ever ready, okay?”

Tony removes his hand, and turns to Bucky.

“Make sure he makes it home alright, okay?” he says, pausing for a split second, before tacking something to the end. “James.”

He knows.

He knows about him and Steve.

The name isn't just a name right now, it's a sign that Tony did some digging and found out about the two of them.

Bucky hesitates for just a moment.

He nods, because this is a problem to be dealt with another day, one where Steve currently isn't frozen and probably in some state of anxiety.

Bucky doesn't even have time to move towards Steve, when Steve abruptly turns, and rushes to the door. He flies out without another word, and Bucky and Tony watch him go.

Bucky goes to follow, and Tony says one last thing.

“Make sure he doesn't hurt – make sure he doesn't get hurt. Just make sure he's alright, okay? Don't leave him alone tonight, he's going to be in a bad place.”

Bucky turns, and faces Tony.

“What happened with you two?” he asks, slipping out of his steel persona.

Tony shrugs.

“Shit,” he says. “A lot of shit. Good things too, but they went bad. It isn't my story to tell, and even if it was, now isn't the time. If I know Steve, and I do know him, better than you, I'd bet, he's probably half-way to a panic attack in the elevator right now.”

Tony leans back, lightly resting on the front of his desk.

He looks _sad_.

“Go take care of him. And, if this is ever going to be explained to you, he should be the one doing it.”

Bucky nods again.

It's less that he wants to hear the story from Tony, more he wants to hear the story, period. He wants to be clear on this, know how to handle this, years in his line of work have trained him to never rush into any situation blind.

But Tony did raise one valid point, and Bucky can admit to himself that if he has to hear this from anyone, it'd be from Steve.

So, he turns, shuts the door behind him, and makes his way down the hall, to the elevator.

The doors are shut, but when he taps the button the doors slide right open.

Steve's sitting on the floor.

And he isn't crying, he isn't angry, he isn't sobbing or screaming or hyperventilating.

He's blank.

His knees are pulled up to his chest, arms tight around them, and he's staring at the ground with a gaze that shows he's not really looking at anything at all.

Bucky steps in, and taps the button for the first floor before sliding down to sit next to Steve.

“What do you need?” he asks, gently.

Steve glances up to him, recognizing his presence for the first time, head tilted slightly.

“What do you mean?” His voice is quiet, unsure, and scratchy, almost as if he forgot how to use his voice entirely.

“I mean just that, what do you need? Hug? Crashing on your sofa with TV on? To talk about it? I never really been in this position before, and I'm just trying to help. So, do you want to talk, or do you want a distraction?”

Steve turns back to the ground.

“I want to go home. I want to take a shower, and go to sleep. You can stay over, if you don't have anything else to do.”

Bucky slides closer, and loops an arm around his shoulder, pulling him close. Security camera's be damned.

“I don't have any plans for as long as you need me to be with you, Steve.”

* * *

The second the words come out of Tony's mouth, his heart stops.

“ _I remade the serum. It's yours, if you want it.”_

The words echo in his ears for a second, the meaning smacking him in the face.

The serum _works_.

Something that should be dead and burred is brought back, and _it fucking works._

Tony steps closer, and smiles.

“I've done small scale trials, observed them carefully this time.”

Because that's what went wrong last time.

If they'd just watched the results closer, none of this would have happened.

Tony continues.

“I've tested over and over, changed dozens of things. It works now. No issues as far as I've seen.”

He practically beams down at Steve.

“It works, Steve, it finally fucking _works_.”

Steve stares up at Tony with wide eyes, and he can't really wrap his head around what's going to happen next.

Tony isn't going to force him into taking the serum, and that much is obvious. It was Steve's choice last time, and Tony isn't the sort to push him into things this serious.

However, Tony apparently spent _years_ working on it.

If Steve says no, that will bring four years of work crashing down.

And, ultimately, the serum is _really fucking tempting_.

It was a thing he daydreamed about as a kid, before he knew such things were possible. It's something he prayed for his mom as a teenager. In his late twenties, it became real, and it became hell.

And it might be back.

But it might fucking work this time.

A thousand and a half thoughts fly through his mind in seconds, some of them memories and some of them predictions of the future, things that could go wrong and things that could be _righted._

Tony smiles sadly, and places a hand on his shoulder.

“I understand.”

Of course he would.

Of fucking course.

Because, when it came down to it, Tony always understood. Him and Steve were as different as day and night, but when it boiled down to it, they knew each other in ways no one else did.

Steve faintly registered that what he's feeling must be something like what Stark's been feeling for the past years, the idea that there might be a way to fix things, but that it could be the past repeating itself.

Tony continues.

“Look. You have my number, know where I live, all that. Think about it. Talk to me in a few weeks, months, hell, however long you need. I finally found a way to fix all of this, just let me know if you're ever ready, okay?”

And maybe he used to get him into trouble all the time as a kid, and there were a few times where Steve hated him, but Tony isn't an asshole. Steve knows this.

He knows that this is the last time Tony is going to talk to him, for a while.

Because Tony's putting the situation into his hands now, and if Steve doesn't give him a call in a few weeks or months, that will be the end of it.

It would be so easy to let it all just end.

And it's what Steve has been wanting for _years_ , but now that it's right in front of him, he's almost too terrified to let it die.

Maybe letting it die would just be cutting Tony off, but ultimately, it'd cut everything off.

It'd be more than losing Tony, it'd be the thoughts of his mom and Howard and Maria laid to rest, it'd mean a solid slice in between _then_ and _now_.

He's daydreamed of it never happening. That he's just a normal man, who happened to be born slightly unhealthy, and grew up with a single mom who passed away a few years back, and didn't have any friends growing up.

His mother did not have any friends who's son became his best friend, he wasn't made sicklier by accident, and there were no serums.

And that isn't true, and that will never be true, but with what's playing out now, letting it end will be the closest he can get to those fantasies coming true.

It'd be so fucking easy to let it all _end_.

Tony turns his gaze from him to behind him, where Bucky must still be standing.

Another dozen thoughts rush into Steve's head, lead by the realization that Bucky's been standing there the entire time, and has heard everything that's transpired.

He's going to have questions, and Steve cannot handle that right now.

“Make sure he makes it home alright, okay, James?”

And the name isn't just a name, it's never just a name.

Bucky told him once that he doesn't deal under the name 'James Barnes', he goes by an alias, some pretentious thing that he didn't choose.

Tony shouldn't know his name is James.

Which means that Tony pried, he dug into everything until he got answers, and now he knows that the two of them know each other. Hell, he probably knows that they're dating, and although once upon a time Tony and Steve would crash on each others beds and talk about the people they're into, they aren't sixteen anymore.

And he's spiraling now, one thought leading to another leading to another, and Steve does two things on instinct.

He takes in a sharp intake of breath.

And he _runs._

He turns and rushes out of Tony's office, oxygen cart clanking as he drags it after him.

He doesn't stop until he's out, and he pauses right outside Tony's door, just outside of Tony's line of sight. He rests for a moment, regaining his breath and listening in for just a moment.

“Make sure he doesn't hurt-”

Steve tenses completely, and he hasn't prayed in years but he's begging whatever deity that will listen that Tony won't continue that sentence.

The Project isn't the only thing he has buried.

And he can't stand Bucky knowing _that thing_.

Bucky's going to ask about the Project, maybe not tonight, but someday Steve is going to have to tell him, and he knows this.

But what Tony's alluding to, he can't fucking stand Bucky knowing that.

Tony stops abruptly, catching himself, and carries on differently.

“Make sure he doesn't get hurt. Just make sure he's alright, okay? Don't leave him alone tonight, he's going to be in a bad place.”

It isn't what Steve hoped Tony would say, but if it works. If Bucky over thinks the sentence, maybe he'll come to the right conclusions, but Steve doesn't allow himself to think of that right now.

He turns and heads down to the elevator, leaving the echos of Bucky's and Tony's conversations behind him.

He makes it to the elevator in a few seconds, and while he waits for the doors to open, he fumbles out his inhaler and takes two doses, probably much faster than he's supposed to.

He taps the button for the doors to close. He takes a seat with his back pressed to the back of the elevator.

Steve pulls his knees up, wrapping his arms around himself.

Generally when he attempts to ignore his anxiety, he fills it with something else. Anger, frustration, sadness.

But none of that's working.

There's nothing to fill in the gap that shoving aside his anxiety leaves, so he simply feels hollow.

He's going to crash and burn like hell in a few hours.

In a few moments, there's the sound of the elevator doors opening, someone stepping in, a button being pushed, the doors shutting.

Bucky takes a seat next to him

“What do you need?” he asks softly.

Steve glances up from the ground.

“What do you mean?” he asks, surprised that his voice even works at all.

“I mean just that, what do you need? Hug? Crashing on your sofa with TV on? To talk about it? I never really been in this position before, and I'm just trying to help. So, do you want to talk, or do you want a distraction?”

Steve turns back to the ground.

He wants things to go back to how they were a few days ago.

He wants Projects and serums to be things of the past.

“I want to go home.”

And he ignores the fact that his apartment never really seems like home, but it's the closest he has to one, so that's where he wants to go.

Then he'll allow himself to collapse.

But not here, in front of Bucky, twenty feet away from Tony.

Not here.

“I want to take a shower, and go to sleep. You can stay over, if you don't have anything else to do.”

Bucky doesn't, at the very least, Steve hopes he doesn't.

Bucky places an arm around his shoulders, moving closer to Steve.

“I don't have any plans for as long as you need me to be with you, Steve.”

Steve leans into him, and the two remain like that for the whole ride down.

When they reach the bottom, Bucky helps him stand and his arm remains around his shoulders as they exit the building, and head to his car.

The car ride home is silent, Bucky driving, Steve curled up in the passengers seat, watching the city's lights flit by outside the window.

Once they reach Steve's apartment, Steve makes a beeline for his bathroom.

He doesn't say another word to Bucky, but shuts and locks the bathroom door behind him.

He doesn't bother with the light, as he knows his tiny bathroom by heart. First he turns on the shower water, giving it a few minutes to heat up.

He drops the tubes to his oxygen tank to the floor, and then goes his jacket, his shirt, his back brace, his shoes, his socks, his pants, his underwear.

The water of his shower is next to boiling hot, and Steve doesn't care.

He runs his fingers through hair, and he scrubs his skin, attempting to wash off the day. When his fingers comes to his wrists, he tenses slightly at the uneven skin, and promptly shuts the water off.

He dries himself off but barely, and grabs a hoodie and a pair of pajama pants out of his hamper, uncaring if they're dirty.

He dresses, ignores his dripping wet hair, and leaves the bathroom.

Bucky's already waiting in his bedroom, looking unsure.

“Do you want me to sleep on the sofa, or?” he says.

“Bed is fine,” is all Steve replies with.

He practically falls into his bed, and tugs the covers over him while Bucky shuts off the lights and gets into bed after him.

Steve isn't tired, but he forces himself to sleep anyway.

* * *

Of the three, only one sleeps that night.

Steve passes out from exhaustion, a mix of sleepless nights before then coupled with the crashing down from anxiety. He doesn't feel tired, but he's out as soon as his head hits the pillow.

Bucky stays awake and stares up at the ceiling, the only noises in Steve's apartment being his own thoughts and Steve's jerky breaths. Bucky was never that good at puzzles as a kid, and the one he's in right now is confusing as fuck. He lays there, staring at nothing, wondering just how to fix things, if things are even possible to fix.

He turns, and watches Steve in the dim lighting that the window provides, and his heart skips a beat every time it looks like Steve isn't breathing.

Tony stays up the entire night, but that isn't new. Most days Pepper would walk in at promptly eight o'clock, and find him still working, in the lab or his office. He isn't working, though, he simply paces.

There's a sketchbook on his desk that he ignores, there's a photo of him and his parents and two other important people on his desk that he ignores, and there's a bottle of something that could change the world in his desk drawer, that he ignores.

He paces.

He thinks of how things used to be.

He doesn't sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I think I need to start spacing chapters out more than a week? I really want to keep updating once a week, but I also like to have a few chapters written ahead of what I'm posting.  
> I'm doing a writing event thing this month, so I'm focusing on one of my original novels currently, so I haven't had time to work on this story. I only have one chapter after this one written down.   
> Unless I get a chance to work on this story soon, I may have to skip next week's update, to give me more time to work on it. Sorry!  
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed this chapter that's just a pile of angst! Poor Steve :(


	14. Attempted Recoveries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In just a few minutes the three find themselves on the sofa, Natasha to his left, sitting crosslegged and facing him, and Clint sitting on the floor in front, leaning back on the coffee table behind him. Steve has his knees pulled up to his chest, as he generally does when he's not feeling well.  
> “We're listening,” Clint says not in a way that's pushy, but in a way signaling for Steve to begin whenever he's ready.  
> Steve takes a deep breath.

Steve wakes first.

And for a split second, all he knows is that he's in bed with Bucky, but then he remembers what happened last night.

He pushes the covers back, careful not to disturb Bucky, and gets up. It's nearing spring, but it's still chilly, so he grabs a pair of thick socks from his dresser, and slips them on before leaving his room.

The clock on his dresser says seven a.m. in bright red numbers.

He turns down into his hallway, and doesn't even bother stopping at his kitchen. He hasn't been shopping in a while, and there probably isn't anything good in there.

It's a Monday, though, and on Mondays Natasha bakes.

Natasha works on every day but Monday, and that's when she does her hobbies. It's bright and early, and knowing her, she probably hasn't even gone to sleep yet.

Steve slips out of his apartment, and heads down to her and Clint's apartment.

They live in the one next to his, and Steve doesn't even bother with knocking. He enters, and sure enough Natasha's hovering around their kitchen, Clint sitting up on a counter, bowl in his lap, their dog hovering around their feet, hoping for a scrap of something to be dropped.

There's the smell of something lingering in the air, he can't quite pin what it is, but there's a bit of cinnamon and it's something bread like, for sure.

Steve only says “Hey,” when Nat and Clint are about to kiss.

Natasha just glances over to him, Clint half falls off of the counter.

He's only in his underwear, and he glares at Steve. It's not as if Steve hadn't seen him in less (because there was that one night a handful of months ago, where they and Sam played truth or dare, which they all tried to forget).

“You could have knocked,” Clint says, shuffling over to the living room adjacent to the kitchen, and grabs a pair of pajama pants off of the many clothes scattered over the floor. They're probably Nat's, considering they're black and red, whereas Clint mainly wears purple, but he puts them on anyway.

“Just like how you guys always knock,” Steve says, although by the tiredness in his voice, the others can tell he isn't up for back-and-forth sarcastic remarks today.

“What's up?” Nat asks. She looks over Steve with narrowed eyes, taking in his disheveled appearance.

Steve's aware he must look like a mess. Considering the sparse amount of sleep he's gotten in the past weekend, the bags under his eyes must be more prominent and purple than ever, and he's aware he looks fairly paler than usual. His hair is a wreck, because of going to sleep with it wet last night.

And he just feels weighed down, so he's aware that he must look, overall, tired as fuck.

Steve shrugs.

“James is over, and I don't have anything in the fridge. Came to leech some food off of you.”

“Popover's will be done in about twenty minutes, now sit down and tell me what's wrong,” Natasha orders.

Steve takes a seat on one of the stools line up by the kitchen island, and rests his chin in his hands, elbows propped up on the island.

“I had a rough night,” is all he says. Clint makes a face as if he's about to say some kind of dirty joke, and Natasha silences him with just a raise of an eyebrow before turning back to Steve.

“What happened?”

Steve hesitates for a second.

And maybe he just feels like venting, or maybe he's just too tired to lie.

“I saw Stark last night.”

Clint's eyes go wide, and Nat looses her composure, expression slipping into something a mixture of confusion and worry.

“Oh _shit_ ,” Clint says, frowning. “Are you okay?”

Steve, after a moment, nods.

“I'm fine. I almost had a panic attack last night, though, and I'm still anxious, but like, it isn't going away. Or getting worse. I'm fine, I just don't feel fine.”

Clint nods.

Natasha leans forward, a bit.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

There's been plenty of nights where Steve found himself crashing on Clint and Nat's couch, after heart-to-heart's that spun on until three in the morning.

And most of the time it ended with one or three of them crying and generally all of them feeling like shit, but Steve always had walked away feeling the slightest bit better the next morning.

“Yeah,” he says, voice coming out quiet, “I do.”

In just a few minutes the three find themselves on the sofa, Natasha to his left, sitting crosslegged and facing him, and Clint sitting on the floor in front, leaning back on the coffee table behind him. Steve has his knees pulled up to his chest, as he generally does when he's not feeling well.

“We're listening,” Clint says not in a way that's pushy, but in a way signaling for Steve to begin whenever he's ready.

Steve takes a deep breath.

“So, Saturday. Bucky – James, Bucky's an old nickname of his, he said I can call him that now – he got a phone call from Stark. Stark said he had another mission for him, either convincing me to see him again, or bringing me in himself. And Bucky didn't force me to do anything, but running wasn't an option, and so there wasn't any way out of it, so I went to meet him in the Stark tower last night.”

“Did you go alone?” Clint asks. Natasha remains silent, waiting to hear all of the details before giving her piece.

“No, Bucky went with me. He just came to give off the illusion that he was doing his job, me and him didn't know each other. But Stark knows anyway. He figured out somehow,” Steve answers.

“Oh,” Clint says.

Steve continues.

Words feel heavy on his tongue, and he doesn't even feel like speaking at all. It's less that telling the story is draining him, more like _everything_ is draining him.

He feels anxious and sick and _tired._

He pushes that aside, and continues.

“So I saw him again. It's been almost four years. We argued for a bit, kinda like how we used to, and then he says it. And I can handle everything that went on and everything that he said, but he said this one fucking thing.”

He pauses for a moment, and takes in another deep breath. Clint's watching wide-eyed, and Natasha's waiting expectantly.

“He said that he remade the Serum, and that it works this time”

Clint and Nat's reactions are more or less what he expects.

Clint's eyes goes even wider, and he leans forward slightly, about to exclaim something when Natasha cuts him off with a “Holy _fuck_.”

Steve speaks again, wanting to wrap up the story before his friends bombard him with questions.

“He said that it works this time. Did trials and everything, and it works. No side effects. And he said that it's mine if I want it, but if I don't, he won't bother me about it, or anything, again.”

Clint leans back.

“Well, it could have been worse,” he says, which Steve kind of wants to argue over.

He has told Clint and Nat the story, but not the full one. He's told them fragments, enough for them to lace it all together and get an idea of what happened, but not the entire thing.

They don't know the full tale of the Project, and they don't know just how much it fucked him up.

And to Steve, the Serum remade was a worst-case scenario.

Natasha and Clint think that all he left with was shittier lungs and a worse outlook on the world.

It's so much more than that.

Natasha watches Steve carefully, gears turning in her head, while Clint continues.

“I mean, this is pretty bad, I'm sorry you had to go through all that, but at least he didn't go full stalker and try to murder you or something.”

“You're terrible at cheering people up, Clint,” Steve comments, but he knows Clint's attempting his best. Clint generally responds to everything in a lighthearted matter, which is hard to snap out of even in moments like this. Clint, Steve knows, has his own demons, and joking to him is more of a coping mechanism than anything, so Steve lets it slide. “Besides, we did used to be friends. He'd... He'd hire someone to kidnap me and recreate something that fucked my life, but he means well.”

It isn't lost on him that he's defending Stark.

Clint even picks up on this, but has no time to comment before Natasha rejoins the conversation.

“Are you going to do it?”

Steve pauses.

If he doesn't take it, he's safe.

However, if he takes it, and if the Serum fails, he's so unhealthy to the point where another crash that bad could kill him.

But there's the constant underlying thought that it could _work_.

And if it did it'd be nothing short of a miracle.

It could change his life, and it could change Tony's, and it could change countless others.

If it works and if it heals him, it could change the world, modern day medicine as they know it.

And it's fucking tempting.

Clint and Nat are looking at him expectantly.

“I don't fucking know,” Steve says, honestly.

* * *

 

Bucky's about to text Steve when he walks in through the front door, two muffin-like things on a paper plate in hand.

“Sorry,” Steve says, “I meant to be back before you woke up.”

He shuts the door behind him, and heads to his armchair, Bucky watching from his perch on the sofa.

“It's okay, I just woke up,” Bucky replies.

“You want tea, coffee, anything?” Steve asks.

Bucky shakes his head.

“No, I'm fine.”

“Okay,” Steve says, and he sits. He sets down the plate on the coffee table.

“Nat's really good at baking, she made these. Popovers, she called them. I've never tried them before, but pretty much everything she makes is good.”

Steve takes one from the plate and begins eating on it, and besides the fact that he hasn't looked Bucky in the eye once this morning, he's acting as if the night before hasn't happened.

Bucky has questions, and he's uncertain if Steve is ever going to answer them, but they're there. He's not going to force Steve to talk, of course not, but he does find it the slightest bit odd that Steve isn't saying a word about it at all.

He takes the thing off of the plate, and takes a bite.

It takes like cinnamon and butter, and apparently Steve's friend is one hell of a baker, maybe one to rival even Thor and Jane, but Bucky doesn't feel that hungry.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, because if Steve answers curtly, he'll know not to bring up last night, but if Steve does want to talk, it's a question that will draw out an answer as good as any.

“Still anxious,” Steve says, “I didn't really sleep well last night.”

He stares down at his lap for a moment, before looking up to Bucky.

“I'm sorry if I came off as rude or blunt last night. I... I wasn't...”

He's struggling for the right words, so Bucky cuts in.

“No, it's fine,” Bucky says, “You weren't rude.”

Steve nods, eyes turning back downward.

“You probably have a lot of questions,” Steve says.

“Steve.”

Steve looks back up at him, through tired blue eyes.

“When I said I wasn't going to do anything that you don't want me to, I meant it,” Bucky says, voice firm but soft all at once, “That includes asking questions. I am curious, but you're prioritized over that. If talking about it is going to make your anxiety worse, we don't have to.”

Steve nods. It seems as if the slightest of weights has been taken off his shoulders.

“I will explain it all someday, I promise,” he says, “I just... I can't think about this any more today.”

“I understand. I mean, I haven't ever been in the position you're in, nothing near it, but, um, I used to have anxiety myself and I know how exhausting it can be.”

“Wait, really?” Steve says, and Bucky suddenly remembers that he's never mentioned his anxiety to Steve before.

“Yeah. It doesn't bother me so much anymore, but it was really bad as a teenager. And it was hard to deal with too, because, well, I grew up in an orphanage, so it's not like I had any way of getting officially diagnosed with anything.”

He hasn't every really told this all to anyone. The people at the orphanage already knew his deal, and everyone after that didn't need knowing.

But Steve's different.

Bucky isn't quite sure when he pegged Steve as _different._ And maybe there wasn't ever just one moment. When he stood up to him, the first time they met, that was one, and the night he broke into his apartment again and wound up spending half the night with him over tea was another.

And there is Bruce and Peggy and Darcy and Loki, but Bucky never quite felt the urge to dish out his story to them. Sometimes when the others talked about their pasts, he'd say something inconsequential here and there, but he never actually wanted to sit down and talk about it all.

But Steve's different.

Steve nods vividly, recognition lighting up his eyes.

“That's how it was for me,” he says, borderline excited, “I mean, I didn't grow up in an orphanage, but the diagnosis thing. My dad died when I was a kid, and my mom was barely scraping enough together for us to get by, so we never had the money to afford going to the doctor for it. A friend of the family-” Steve catches himself, freezing for a moment, before clearing his throat and continuing regardless, and Bucky doesn't comment on the blond's momentary panic, “He offered a few times to help out, but we never took him up on it.”

“Oh,” Bucky says. “Have you gone to a doctor about it since?”

Steve hesitates.

“Sort of,” he says, and by the clipped tone in his voice, Bucky knows that's all he's going to get out of that question.

“Okay,” Bucky says, and he keeps the conversation going by turning it on himself, “I haven't ever gone. I've thought about it, but it hasn't bothered me in a long time, so I don't think there's much of a point in it.”

Steve nods.

“I'm glad it doesn't bother you,” he says, before realizing it might be an odd thing to say. He blushes slightly. “I mean, I know what it's like, of course, and I'm just... I'm glad you don't have to go through that.”

Bucky smiles.

“Thank you, Steve,” he says, and he means it.

And he wishes he could take away Steve's problems, mental, physical, he wishes he could _help_ _him._

He can vividly remember how he got out of his anxiety though, and that is not an option for Steve.

Besides, the whole process of becoming an assassin and shedding the shell of what he used to be, it was grueling overall.

And judging by all that's happened in the past weekend, Steve has had enough of bad things in his life.

* * *

They sit on Steve's sofa, and talk.

Steve still seems a bit on edge.

Bucky keeps on talking.

It takes a while, but soon Steve feels as if he can breathe again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I decided to update this week. I have a bit of the next chapter written down, and I'll try to get it all done in time for next Friday.  
> My other writing thing is going good, I'm halfway done with an original novel of mine! I've been able to keep up with that with plenty of time left over, so hopefully I'll be able to devote some of my time to working on this.  
> Thank all of you for understanding!


	15. Distractions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you like cupcakes?" Bucky asks, "I mean, they have more than cupcakes there, but I think that's their main thing. It's been a while since I've been there."  
> "I like cupcakes," Steve answers.  
> "Remember Jane and Darcy, from poker night?"  
> "How can I forget?"  
> "Yeah, well, they own a bakery together. Thor and Loki work there too, I think. So half of it is the usual bakery things, the other half is Asguardian foods. It's a cool place."

Bucky isn't quite sure what Steve's coping mechanisms are.

And he knows he doesn't have something like washing his hands or checking the locks a dozen times, but that isn't what he's wondering.

What he is wondering is what Steve does after a night like last night.

He spends the rest of the day with him, because he decides that he'll only leave if Steve asks, and Steve almost acts like his usual self.

And it's kind of unnerving, because he's acting so goddamn normal, and that means that he's either always amazing at covering up his anxiety, or he bounces back quickly.

Bucky thinks it's the former.

And throughout the day he watches Steve carefully. He drinks the same amount of tea, he buries himself in a few more blankets than usual, calls in sick to work, and binge watches drama shows.

He doesn't mention the idea of leaving the apartment once, and he doesn't eat once, besides breakfast in the morning.

So, a little into the night, Bucky suggests they go out and get something to eat.

Steve thinks for a moment, and eventually agrees.

"So," he asks, when they're in Bucky's car, heading to somewhere, "Where are we going?"

"Do you like cupcakes?" Bucky asks, "I mean, they have more than cupcakes there, but I think that's their main thing. It's been a while since I've been there."

"I like cupcakes," Steve answers.

"Remember Jane and Darcy, from poker night?"

Steve smiles.

"How can I forget?"

"Yeah, well, they own a bakery together. Thor and Loki work there too, I think. So half of it is the usual bakery things, the other half is Asguardian foods. It's a cool place."

"It sounds nice," Steve says.

"It is," Bucky replies, and the rest of the ride happens in silence.

Bucky watches Steve out of the corner of his eye, occasionally risking a glance off the road to watch his boyfriend.

And, if he's honest with himself, Steve doesn't look good.

He still has that cold, and it's evident that the last couple of days took a major toll on him. He looks even paler than usual, and he looks almost like he's about to fall asleep right then and there.

And it isn't lost on Bucky that it's been a very long time since he's worried about anyone or anything, but he can't help but worry about the tiny man in his passenger seat.

When they make it to Jane's bakery it's ten at night, one full hour past closing time. But the lights are still on, and Jane's behind the counter.

Darcy once said that regular hours don't apply to Bucky, so he and Steve walk in anyway.

When the bells above the door chime, Jane speaks without looking up from wiping down the counters.

"Sorry, we're closed," she says, glancing up at the end. "Oh. James. Hey."

“Are you guys still open?” Bucky asks. He knows it's a no, but he's subtly asking if Darcy's rule still applies to them.

“Well,” Jane begins, before being cut off abruptly by someone in the back room.

“Of course we're open!” a voice calls out, Darcy rushing out a second later. She's in the same uniform as Jane, sans apron, and has a Wii remote in her hand. “We're always open for you guys.”

“Good,” Jane says, turning to Darcy, “You can serve them.”

Darcy pouts.

“I can't!” she protests, “Me and Thor are in a Mario Kart tournament, I can't just stop that!”

Jane, who looks a little tired and a lot stressed, raises an eyebrow.

“You're playing video games while I'm cleaning up,” she says, before frowning. “I have two papers I need to write for school, and this place is still a mess.”

She slips off her apron and balls it up, tossing it to Darcy.

“Um, we can go if it's too much trouble,” Steve says.

Darcy continues to glare at her best friend, and neither of them reply.

“You're gonna take care of them. I'm gonna take a break,” Jane says.

“Fine,” Darcy agrees.

Jane walks to the back room, snatching the Wii remote out of her hand as she passes by.

Darcy tosses the apron behind her, uncaring of where it lands, and turns to Bucky and Steve.

“She gets cranky when she's tired,” she informs the two.

“Do not!” Jane shouts, from the back room.

Darcy rolls her eyes.

“Okay, so I'm not going to heat up the oven again and I am far too lazy to make anything for you, so you're just getting coffee and microwaved leftover pastries. That cool?”

Bucky glances down at Steve, getting his approval first, before agreeing.

“That's fine, Darcy.”

“Cool. Take a seat wherever.”

Steve and Bucky do, taking a seat in a small booth in a corner, with a window capturing the city on one side. The view out of it isn't anything to write home about, but it's still gorgeous nonetheless.

“So,” Steve says. He pulls his legs up, sitting crosslegged in the booth, leaning his bony elbows on the table, resting his chin in his palms. “Why'd you take me here?”

Bucky leans in a little closer, enjoying the serenity of being alone in the cafe with Steve. (Darcy is messing around the kitchen, but quietly, and there is the distant sound of Jane launching a blue-shell at Thor (which prompts a string of Asguardian curses), but it's still nice nonetheless).

“Here in particular, or just out of the house?” Bucky asks.

“Both,” Steve answers with.

“This place makes amazing food, and I thought it'd be good for you to get out of the house.”

Steve nods, after a moment of thought.

“Yeah,” he admits, “I do have a tendency to hole myself up after nights like that.”

Bucky nods, but before he can speak again, Darcy's back with two mugs of coffee. She's off without another word.

Bucky glances over.

“Darc-”

“Thor just picked Rainbow Road and I am _not_ missing out on that,” Darcy says over her shoulder, “Jane's gonna explode.”

Bucky grins, and glances back to Steve.

“Wanna go watch? It'll probably end with both of them getting pissed, and it'll be hilarious,” he asks Steve.

Steve hesitates for just a moment, before grabbing his coffee mug.

“Let's go,” he says, with a smile to match Buckys.

* * *

Steve doesn't generally leave his house after anxiety attacks.

He's more the type to hole himself up in his apartment, to sleep it off, or to ignore the world and focus on drawing or something along those lines.

Bucky, however, used to make himself go out, he threw himself back into the world and built himself back up along the way. He mentioned it once before.

And Steve's quite content with remaining his apartment, but he's well aware that in the wake of worse moments of anxiety, he finds himself not leaving his apartment for days at a time.

So, when Bucky suggests that they go out to eat, he agrees.

A bit on the edges of the city is a small bakery, owned by Darcy and Jane, and that's where Bucky takes Steve.

The car ride is short and the conversation is light. Steve's the one to break the silence first.

“So, where are we going?” he asks, tucking his legs up under him, propping up an elbow by the window so he can rest his chin in his hand.

"Do you like cupcakes?" Bucky asks, "I mean, they have more than cupcakes there, but I think that's their main thing. It's been a while since I've been there."

Steve has to fight off the urge to smile, because for whatever reason the thought of Bucky frequenting a cupcake place is a little bit funny.

“I like cupcakes,” he answers.

Bucky nods, as if he expected it, which Steve's betting he did. Honestly, who _doesn't_ like cupcakes?

“Remember Jane and Darcy, from poker night?” Bucky asks.

Steve grins.

“How could I forget?”

"Yeah, well, they own a bakery together,” Bucky explains, “Thor and Loki work there too, I think. So half of it is the usual bakery things, the other half is Asguardian foods. It's a cool place."

"It sounds nice," Steve says, because it does. It's been a while since he ate out at all, so anything other than ramen and peanut butter sandwiches sounds nice.

"It is," Bucky replies, and the rest of the ride happens in silence.

Steve stares out the window, and watches the lights of the city float by.

He pretends not to notice Bucky shooting him worried glances.

He's used to those looks, from Nat and Clint and Sam, and he's used to ignoring them.

They arrive at the place soon enough. It's small and unassuming on the outside, looking like nothing more than a regular bakery, blending in seamlessly with the other buildings of the street.

The lights are on inside and Jane's behind the counter, and despite the fact that the sign up front says that they closed an hour ago, Bucky and Steve walk in anyway.

"Sorry, we're closed," Jane says, only glancing up after she scrubs off a particular stuck piece of dough off the counter, "Oh. James. Hey."

“Are you guys still open?” Bucky asks.

“Well,” Jane begins hesitantly, a second before she's interrupted by Darcy.

“Of course we're open!” Darcy shouts from the back room, running to behind the counter in a flash. “We're always open for you guys.”

“Good, you can serve them,” Jane says, turning to Darcy.

“I can't!” Darcy protests, waving the Wii remote in her hand wildly, “Me and Thor are in a Mario Kart tournament, I can't just stop that!”

Jane sighs, half glaring at Darcy.

“You're playing video games while I'm cleaning up. I have _two_ papers I need to write for school, and this place is still a mess.”

She tugs off her apron easily, and tosses it at Darcy, who catches it despite the remote still in her hand.

“Um,” Steve says, breaking into the fight hesitantly, “We can go if it's too much trouble.”

Neither Darcy or Jane seem to hear him, but they do continue glaring at each other for a moment.

“You're gonna take care of them. I'm gonna take a break,” Jane says, definitively.

“Fine,” Darcy replies, after a moment, and that's the end of their stand off.

Jane heads to the back room, and she takes the remote controller from Darcy as she passes by, giving her a smug look before going off to play Mario Kart with her boyfriend.

Once she's gone, Darcy tosses the apron away, it landing haphazardly on top of a blender, and turns to to Steve and Bucky.

“She gets cranky when she's tired,” she says, with a smile.

“Do not!”

Darcy rolls her eyes, offers up a small shrug.

“Okay, so I'm not going to heat up the oven again and I am far too lazy to make anything for you, so you're just getting coffee and microwaved leftover pastries. That cool?” she asks.

Bucky glances over to Steve, who gives him a small nod.

“That's fine, Darcy,” Bucky says.

“Cool. Take a seat wherever,” Darcy says, flipping a hand about to gesture to all the empty rooms in the bakery. She turns to head into the kitchens, and Steve and Bucky go to look for a seat.

They find a small one in the corner of the building, a window on one side and the empty room spread out all around. Steve sits crosslegged in the booth, and Bucky keeps his legs close tom him, but their knees bump each other anyway. It's a tiny booth, the smallest in the bakery and obviously an afterthought, but it's nice.

Steve can see Bucky up close, and he props his chin up in his palms, squints his eyes. He's only known Bucky for a handful of months, and he looks different.

He doesn't hold himself so rigidly anymore, more loose and relaxed, although he always does coil up when a sudden noise or knock or voice sounds. There's a few faint wrinkles at the edges of his eyes, from stress, no doubt, and his smile seems brighter than it used to be, although there seems to be a weight on his shoulders, especially tonight.

“So, why'd you take me here?” Steve asks, although he already knows.

He knows Bucky's worried, and he knows he's trying to make him happier. Bucky's worried and this is some attempt at making Steve less anxious.

Steve's half curious as to whether Bucky will admit it or not.

“Here in particular, or just out of the house?”

“Both.”

“This place makes amazing food, and I thought it'd be good for you to get out of the house,” Bucky answers.

Acceptable answer, Steve thinks.

“Yeah, I do have a tendency to hole myself up after nights like that.”

Bucky nods and seems like he's about to say something when Darcy swoops in, two mugs of coffee in hand. She sets them down (and they do spill a little) before heading off to the back room.

“Darc-” Bucky begins, before Darcy cuts him off.

“Thor just picked Rainbow Road and I am _not_ missing out on that. Jane's gonna explode.”

Bucky looks over at Steve, grinning.

“Wanna go watch? It'll probably end with both of them getting pissed, and it'll be hilarious,” he asks.

Steve grab his coffee mug, beginning to work on getting out of the booth.

“Let's go,” he says, with a grin.

* * *

It winds up with the five of them sitting in front of the shitty TV in the back room. Bucky cheers for Thor while Steve encourages Jane, and they both fall off of Rainbow Road so many times that they lose track.

Jane winds up coming in eleventh place, with Thor in twelfth, and Steve shoots Bucky a smug look, and that's all the motivation Bucky needs to challenge Steve to a race.

The five wind up staying there until one in the morning.

Steve and Bucky sit so close their shoulders touch, and whenever Bucky's too tired to care about PDA he puts his arm around Steve and tugs him close.

For now, everything is okay.

For now.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM BACK YAY.  
> With two apologies and a mostly filler chapter, I hope it wasn't too boring!   
> First apology, I'm so sorry for this taking so long. I had the rest of my July writing event (which, I finished my second full length original novel in a month, yay for that), and then I had camp, other writing projects, relatives visiting, general lack of motivation, but none of that matters because I'm back now!! I'm gonna resume posting chapters on Fridays. I already have half of the next chapter written, which brings me back to my next apology.  
> I am sorry for what's going to go down in the next chapter.  
> :)


	16. Storms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It starts with Bucky commenting on Steve's anxiety.

It starts with Bucky commenting on Steve's anxiety.

It results with them both standing, glaring, palms shaking, and curse words on the tips of their tongues.

Steve's chest hurts, it hurts from screaming and yelling. He's tired, his eyes are burning, but so are Bucky's, and Steve's never been one to back down from a fight.

“Get out,” Steve demands.

There's a steadiness in his voice, and he's glad. He feels like he's being torn right in two, but his voice is steady, and that helps.

Bucky steps closer, his glare matching Steve's.  
“Steve-”

And Steve can't fucking take it anymore.

“Get out!” he shouts, “ _Get the fuck out!_ You're going to leave at some fucking point, so I may as well be the one who decides when that happens!”

Because, of course, it's inevitable.

Bucky will leave at some point, and Steve knows this. He expects it with every fiber of his being.

He isn't good enough for Bucky, and everyone leaves eventually.

“Steve,” Bucky says again, stepping closer.

Steve doesn't want him closer, he wants him _out_ , out of his apartment and his sight and just  _away,_ but he doesn't back down. He's gotten into fights all his life, and he knows the first rule is to stand your ground.

Bucky advances slowly, and Steve doesn't move.

“I'm not going to fucking leave you,” Bucky says, and _oh god_ does Steve want to believe it.

Steve's hands shake, and his shoulders tremble. His heart feels like it's flying and trying to viciously escape his chest, and he almost wishes it would.

It'd be nice for his heart to be gone, it'd be fucking amazing to just _stop feeling_.

He wants to believe Bucky, but he can't.

His mother left.

Howard left.

Tony left.

Bruce left.

Peggy left.

They all fucking left, and Steve knows that history repeats.

And Bucky's name will wind up on that list one day.

“Don't lie to me,” he says, lacking the energy to raise his voice above a whisper, “Don't you fucking lie to me.”

A sudden rush of rage runs down his spine, and his head is far too clouded to pull any sense together.

He storms towards Bucky, crossing the room with ease, and he doesn't stop until he's a heartbeat away from him. He glares up at him, ignores the gunpowder and peppermint smells, ignores Bucky's worried eyes.

“Don't you tell me you're going to stay. Because no one stays. _No one_. Everyone leaves at some point, don't you dare try to lie and say you're going to be different. Every fucking person I've ever loved, they've _left_. And god, it's obvious that I'm such a fucking mess, it's obvious you don't want to deal with my anxiety shit, so just _leave_!”

His voice shakes like a earthquake, and tears threaten the corner of his eyes.

He's fucking breaking, and he half wishes Bucky will just hug him and tell him to shut up, he's being dumb, it's going to be okay and I'll never leave you.

Instead Bucky steps away from him, a faint look of hurt crossing his features.

“Do you really doubt me?” he asks, a sadness forming in his tone.

Steve vaguely recognizes the fact that he's sobbing, and he drags a sleeve over his face.

He doesn't want to doubt Bucky.

He wants a shared apartment and bed, a dog, coffee in the mornings, cuddling at night.

He wants a life.

And he's terrified by that.

“Everyone leaves,” is all he manages to say, voice echoing quiet in the empty apartment.

That isn't what he means to say and he regrets it a second later.

He meant it as an explanation, a justification of his fears.

“You don't trust me at all, do you,” Bucky says, not even phrasing it as a question. His voice rises, tears prick in his own eyes. “Holy shit, Steve, I'm _trying_. I'm fucking trying. I'm putting everything I have into this, _us._ And you think I'd really just walk away?”

Steve shakes, and he can't even sort out the mountain of emotions he's feeling.

“I'm fucking _scared_!” Steve screams, because Bucky isn't understanding and he needs to understand and he's going to _make him understand_ , “Everyone fucking leaves me and I might love you and I can't stand to think that you might leave me some day! I'm fucking _nothing,_ Bucky, I'm sick and I'm anxious and I'm not talented and I'm stupid and I'm nothing, and god, you can do so much better. You can do so much fucking better and one day you're gonna wake up and realize that and _leave._ ”

And Steve tries to breathe, tries not to hyperventilate. He ignores his tears. He realizes he just spilled out all of his insecurities, right out there, on display for Bucky to see.

Bucky pauses, all emotion being wiped off his face in an instant.

“You might love me?”

Steve realized what he said.

And all he can remember was the time after his family all died, his friends all left.

When all he had was his shitty apartment and a sketchbook of memories.

He remembers being young and alone and crying himself to sleep.

He remembers swearing not to trust again.

And he might love Bucky.

And that terrifies him.

He swallows nervously, and stands straighter. He doesn't want Bucky to know just how he's feeling right now.

“W-we shouldn't have this conversation now,” he stutters out. “I think you should go home.”

They should have it later, he decides, when he isn't scared and crying and Bucky isn't feeling whatever he's feeling, whatever is behind his purposefully blank face.

“Steve,” Bucky says, taking a step towards him.

Steve flinches back, purely on instinct. His anxiety is wound tight and he's tired and sad and scared, and if Bucky touches him at all he feels like he'd break down entirely.

Bucky stops where he is, frowning slightly, assessing the situation.

“I see,” is all he says.

And with that, Bucky leaves.

* * *

There's a tempest in his eyes, something harsh and cold and burning and angry and sad and a hundred other things Bucky can't even think of.

Those blue eyes pierce Bucky straight down to his soul.

And it kind of feels like he's back where he was all those months ago. He can almost feel the mask on his face and the leather on his skin, back when he was stealing a sketchbook and Steve was just a stranger who had the guts to glare at assassins.

“Get out,” Steve says. His voice is low and deep and quiet.

Bucky narrows his eyes, and takes a step forward. This fight's a dance, if anything, and he isn't going to back down.

“Steve-” he begins.

“Get out!” Steve repeats, half screaming.

Whatever restraint he had was gone in an instant.

“ _Get the fuck out!_ You're going to leave at some fucking point, so I may as well be the one who decides when that happens!”

“Steve,” Bucky says, taking another step closer. He speaks more firmly, the hidden anger in his voice rising a little.

He's trying to restrain himself,  _god_ , he's trying.

Despite him slowly advancing on Steve, the smaller man doesn't back down an inch.

“I'm not going to fucking leave you,” Bucky says.

Because, yes, he is pissed, and yes, he's going to be pissed for a while.

He had made a off hand comment about how Steve could manage his anxiety better, which spiraled down into the web of anger the two found themselves in currently. And he could have been more sensitive, Bucky knows, but one slip up of words doesn't give Steve an excuse to start yelling at him.

So, yes, he is pissed.

However, that will change.

But him staying with Steve, that won't.

And Steve needs to know that.

Steve glares at him, and maybe there's a little something sad under the stony look he's wearing. His hands are balled up into fists, knuckles still bruised a bright purple from the fight in an alley he was in a few nights ago, hands shaking slightly.

“Don't lie to me,” he says, his voice half a whisper. “Don't you fucking lie to me.”

Steve's the one moving forward now, and even though he's half Bucky's size and doesn't nearly have the experience that Bucky does, Bucky still feels a little intimidated.

Steve doesn't stop till he's barely a breath away from Bucky.

He tilts his head back, and looks him in the eyes.

“Don't you tell me you're going to stay. Because no one stays. _No one_. Everyone leaves at some point, don't you dare try to lie and say you're going to be different.” There's a waver in his voice, a glimpse of the sadness through the cracks, but Steve continues nonetheless. “Every fucking person I've ever loved, they've _left_. And god, it's obvious that I'm such a fucking mess, it's obvious you don't want to deal with my anxiety shit, so just _leave_!”

Bucky takes a step back, and he kind of wants to run or kiss him or leave or apologize. He can't even find the strength in him to glare once the weight of the words hit.

“Do you really doubt me?” he asks.

Steve drags the sleeve of his hoodie across his eyes, and that's the only recognition he gives to his tears. They're streaming down his face freely, and he's an utter mess, sadness welling up in those bright blue eyes.

He chokes in a breath of air.

“Everyone leaves.”

Bucky nods, and attempts to ignore the tears falling down his own cheeks.

Steve had been the first person in a very long time that he'd loved.

And now everything's crumbling.

He nods again, and swallows down the lump in his throat.

“You don't trust me at all, do you,” he says, not even phrasing it as a question. “Holy shit, Steve, I'm _trying_. I'm fucking trying. I'm putting everything I have into this, _us._ And you think I'd really just walk away?”

He's half shouting, voice rising to match Steve's.

“I'm fucking _scared_!” Steve practically screams, it's a wonder the neighbors haven't heard already, “Everyone fucking leaves me and I might love you and I can't stand to think that you might leave me some day! I'm fucking _nothing,_ Bucky, I'm sick and I'm anxious and I'm not talented and I'm stupid and I'm nothing, and god, you can do so much better. You can do so much fucking better and one day you're gonna wake up and realize that and _leave._ ”

Bucky stops, picking up on Steve's fears and insecurities, but latching onto one phrase in the middle.

“You might love me?”

Steve stares at him, realizing what he let slip.

There's still tears on his cheeks and his chin is quivering and his shoulders are shaking and he honestly looks scared half to death.

He swallows nervously, before standing straight, composing himself in an instant.

“W-we shouldn't have this conversation now,” he stutters out. “I think you should go home.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, taking a step towards him.

Steve takes a step back.

Bucky stops in his tracks.

“I see,” he says, voice clipped.

And he isn't sure what to feel, because Steve might love him.

But it's also blatantly obvious that Steve doesn't trust him.

Without another word, Bucky turns, and exits the apartment.

* * *

Steve, in a fit of anxiety and desperation, picks up his phone. He dials a number he knows by heart, and the person on the other line doesn't speak when he answers.

Bucky's phone rings. It's a few days after the fight, and his phone buzzes, and he doesn't even have to glance at the caller ID before answering.

“Tony, it's me. I decided to take you up on your offer.”

“James, it's Natasha. I don't know if you two are on speaking terms, but that isn't important. Steve's in the hospital.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	17. Flashbacks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s a miracle, a cure, salvation in a bottle.

Howard slams down his tray, catching the attention of the girl on the other side of the cafeteria table.

The whole cafeteria was buzzing, white noise from the chatter of dozens of teenagers, and the table Howard sat at was away from the noise.

The girl glanced up from her homework, expression on her face clearly reading that she’d prefer to be left alone.

Howard grins at her anyway.

“So,” he says, as he struggles with opening up a ketchup packet, “I was thinking, and I came to a solution to our shared issue.”

Sarah quirked up an eyebrow.

“Shared issue?”

“Everyone hates us,” Howard says, giving up on the ketchup packet, “I mean, you’ve heard about me, no doubt. ‘Howard Stark, the guy who slept with every girl and half the guys in school’? And I’ve seen you and you’re like always alone, so, I was thinking-”

“People don’t hate me,” Sarah interrupts, “People like me just fine.”

“Wait, really?” Howard says, dropping the french fry he was holding. “I thought you didn’t have any friends either?”

Sarah shakes her head, twirling her pencil around in her hand.

“People like me, I don’t have friends.”

“Explain to me how that works.”

Sarah frowns, casts another glance down at the homework she should be doing, before speaking again.

“Don’t have time for them,” she says, “Just like how I also don’t have time for strangers asking me stupid questions.”

“How can you not have time for friends?” Howard asks incredulously, completely ignoring her second statement.

Sarah stares at him.

“It might come as a surprise to you, rich boy, but some people actually have to do work to help their families out,” Sarah deadpans. “I have two jobs and homework on top of it. I actually have more pressing things to do with my time than make the science lab explode, it’s astonishing, I know.”

“The science lab was an accident,” Howard defends, waving a french fry after her, “But being busy is no excuse for not having friends.”

“It kinda is.”

“So,” Howard continues, not listening to Sarah’s sarcastic comments, “The first plan was to friend up with each other as a form of petty revenge for all those slut shaming me and being dicks to you for whatever reason. That plan is now invalidated.”

“Yay for that,” Sarah says, “Now, I have homework-”

“But I have a new plan,” Howard says, before popping another french fry into his mouth.

“Fantastic,” Sarah says, through gritted teeth. She should be focusing on algebra, not entertaining the rich kid’s eccentric plans.

“I’m gonna befriend you just because.”

Sarah glares at him.

“And you decide the best way of doing that would be annoying me to death?”

“I’m nothing if not persistent.”

* * *

Despite Sarah’s reluctance, the two teens eventually become friends.

It starts with Howard hanging around her locker, inviting her to parties, sitting by her at lunch.

It winds up with Sarah caving in and saying “If it’ll make you shut up, I get off of work at five.”

The first time Howard goes over, his eyes go wide at the house that is as big as his kitchen back home. Sarah shows him around, they play board games for the rest of the evening, and despite Howard’s persistence she does not let him show her 'a cool chemistry trick’, deciding that her mother wouldn’t take having her kitchen exploding well.

Somehow or another, the two become friends.

* * *

And despite the rumors floating around school, they aren’t dating or fucking.

They’re just friends.

Howard’s in his senior year when he meets a transfer student named Maria, and it’s Sarah who walks up to her and tells her “My emotionally stunted best friend is far too used to lust and not having actual crushes, so he has no clue how to tell you he thinks you’re cute. He does, though. That’s him right there,  hiding behind that fern.”

And Sarah meets Joseph in her senior year too, and Howard’s the one who almost hits him with a car in the parking lot. He grins and waves his hand and tells him “Sorry! But if you hurt Sarah in any way, shape, or form, I won’t miss next time!”

They take a graduation selfie together (because Howard, the innovative man he is, invents the selfie early.)

They attend each others weddings.

They attend Sarah’s mother’s funeral first, and Howard’s parents funerals several months later.

They’re friends.

* * *

Tony’s born first.

It’s far, far after high school (Howard jokes that he’s lucky he hasn’t gotten a girl pregnant before then, Maria swats his arm).

He has his mothers eyes and a head full of messy brown hair, and Sarah’s the third to hold him after Maria and Howard.

Her eyes go wide and Tony stirs in his sleep.

She glances up to Joseph.

“I want one.”

* * *

And she does wind up pregnant a few years later. Howard is excited when he hears, but then the realization that Sarah’s never been exactly healthy hits all of them, and while expecting the new Rogers is exciting, it’s scary too.

Steve is born premature, and he’s tiny and red and has to stay in the hospital for a few months.

He’s several months old when Sarah holds him for the first time, and she cries when she does.

He has her eyes.

Howard holds Tony on his hip, and points at the baby.

“That’s gonna be your best friend soon,” he tells his son, because he just knows it.

* * *

Time spins on and they wind up drifting into their own lives, and they don’t really connect again until Howard opens up the obituaries one day and sees Joseph’s name at the top.

Heart attack, it says, leaving behind a wife and a six year old son.

Howard, Maria, and Tony all attend the funeral.

Howard doesn’t even have to say a word, he walks up to the woman sobbing by the casket and slips an arm around her shoulders, and Sarah instantly knows its him.

Besides the Starks, there’s no one there besides Sarah, and a pale blond boy sitting in the front row of chairs set up, looking far too tired to cry.

Maria moves forward to give Sarah her condolences, and Tony stands in the doorway.

There’s something vaguely familiar about the woman and the dead guy, he thinks, but he can’t quite pin it.

Standing in the doorway is boring, he decides, so he moves to the chairs, and takes a seat next to the kid.

He’s a little kid, he has to be a few years younger than Tony. Tony’s nine, and a self proclaimed adult, but the kid who looks like he was crying is obviously a little kid.

He’s stick thin and his eyes are rimmed in red, and he has a vacant look in his eyes.

“Hey,” Tony says, causing the little kid to snap to attention. “Are you alright?”

The little kid looks up at him.

“No,” is all he says, before frowning down at the ground. “’M not okay.”

“Oh,” Tony says, “Sorry 'bout that.”

The little kid continues to glare at the ground.

“My name’s Tony,” Tony says, “It’s actually Anthony, but my parents and the maids only use that when they’re fussin’ at me. So I’m usually just Tony.”

The little kid sniffles.

“I’m Steve,” he says.

Tony thinks for a moment, and decides he doesn’t like seeing Steve sad.

“Maybe later you can come over to my house,” he says, because that’s the first thing that pops into his head, “I just got a huge train track set, it’s really cool! That might help you feel okay again.”

Steve stares at him.

“Maybe,” is all he says.

* * *

“You’re sick,” Howard says, frowning, hands on Sarah’s shoulders, glancing over her. Maria has a frown to match. “Again.”

“It isn’t anything,” Sarah dismisses. “Just another asthma flare up, I’m fine, honestly.”

“Sarah,” Howard sighs, dropping his hands down to his sides.

She’s always like this, she always brushes aside her illnesses as if they’re nothing.

“You aren’t,” Howard replies. “And I really am worried about you.”

“Things are bad now. I’ll be fine-”

“What if you aren’t, though?” Howard said, the stress in his voice rising.

“You have to think of Steve,” Maria says softly, “Even if you aren’t worried about you for yourself, think of him.”

Sarah glances over to the other side of the room, where her son is playing with trains, with Tony. Since she and Howard reconnected, the boys had been inseparable. Steve’s nine now, Tony’s twelve, and Sarah loves them both.

She never really cared about being sick, and then Steve happened, and Joseph died.

She’s all Steve has, and that’s when she started caring.

She turns back to them.

“Why did you call me here?” she asks.

Howard and Maria exchanged a glance, mentally debating who should say it, when Howard lost.

“We’ve been talking,” he said, speaking carefully, “And we want to ask you and Steve to move in with us.”

Sarah stares at him for a moment, before shaking her head.

“I- I can’t,” she stammers out, “That’s way too much, I can’t.”

“Sarah,” Maria says firmly, “There is absolutely no need for you to be living alone, working two jobs, when we can help. We want to help. You’re running yourself ragged, and we want you to be okay, to not have to worry about making ends meet.”

Sarah shakes her head again.

“I just… Steve doesn’t need this,” she says, “Leaving the house he grew up in, that’d wreck him. It’s the house I had with Joseph, it’d wreck me. I can’t take this, it’s too much, it wouldn’t be right for us, I’m sorry.”

Howard considers this a moment, before nodding.

“I understand,” he says at length, putting himself in her shoes. If Maria died, he wouldn’t want to leave behind all that he had built with her. “But, there is one other thing. You don’t need to answer this right now, but I want you to consider it, okay?”

Sarah seems the slightest bit unsure, but she nods.

“You know my company has been working on bio-engineering, right?”

Sarah nods again, a bit more hesitant this time.

“Well, one of the things we were looking into was creating a super serum. Essentially, it’d be something that would change an ordinary person into a super soldier. Enhanced senses, super strength, sickness is a thing of the past. Plans to use to to create soldiers fell through, but I’m working on tinkering it into something different, something better.”

He takes in a deep breath.

“It’ll take years,” he tells her, “It’ll take years and trials and a lot of lying to the government because this might be illegal but I’m ignoring that. I think I really am onto something here, Sarah, and I might be able to modify it. Fix it to fix you.”

Sarah stares at him for a moment, glances over to Steve. Steve sniffles, goes back to playing, and Sarah turns back to Howard.

Whether she shows it or not, she doesn’t have years left. Sarah knows her body, her sickness, better than anyone else, and she knows Howard’s making promises for a day that might not even come.

Her years, months, days, they’re numbered.

But Steve’s isn’t.

He’s young but he’s not fine, he goes to the doctor every other month and he has a cough that rattles in his chest and he has a list of ailments as tall as he is.

Sarah’s going to die soon.

But Steve isn’t.

“Do you think it’ll work?” Sarah asks, and she’s not asking if it’ll work for her.

Howard had followed her gaze over to Steve, picked up on what she was thinking easily.

He nods.

“I think I can make it work.”

* * *

To everyone’s surprise, Sarah lives nine more years.

To everyone’s surprise, Howard and Maria only live four.

Its a late night, a drunk driver, a blur and crash and explosion.

Closed caskets, reporters and press, and in the middle there’s a sixteen year old boy sobbing.

Sarah’s bony, and she uses her elbows and shoulders to push her way past the group of reporters surrounding the funeral home. Steve follows her, set expression on his face and tears in his eyes.

The funeral home is packed, with businessmen and contacts and partners. They all talk to each other, and give odd looks to Sarah and Steve, in their second hand clothes and obviously not rich demeanor.

Sarah prowls through the funeral home like she’s on a mission. She ignores the caskets, tries not to cry. She can cry at home, but as for now, there’s a sixteen year old who needs someone strong.

She finds Tony easily, and takes a seat next to him.

She wraps an arm tight around his shoulders, pulling him close to her and he turns into her and _sobs_.

* * *

Tony moves in with them.

He’s rich and on his eighteenth birthday he’s set to inherit all of Stark Industries.

He moves in with them and shares a room with Steve, goes to high school, flirts with girls.

He treats Steve like a little brother, and Sarah treats Tony like a son.

Even when his eighteenth birthday hits, he doesn’t move out, and the three of them are a family.

* * *

Sarah dies when Steve is eighteen, and Tony is twenty one.

The funeral is small, Steve sits and stares and doesn’t know what to do.

Tony takes a seat by him.

He doesn’t speak for hours, Steve doesn’t speak for days.

* * *

Tony moves out a year later.

Combined tragedies and college lead to him wanting his own place, and then he has a company and a girlfriend (sort of, he doesn’t know what Pepper is) and maybe alcoholism and a _life_.

Steve skips out on college, draws more, picks up two full time jobs. He gets sicker, Tony visits sometimes and worries, and Steve insists he’s fine through haggard coughs and wheezing breaths.

One day Tony goes through his fathers old things, and comes across a sketchbook. It’s labeled Project Rebirth, and he flips through it.

Inside are scrawled notes and sketches. Plans, equations, variables. It’s all details of one thing.

It’s a miracle, a cure, salvation in a bottle.

He thinks of Steve and his weak limbs and his wheezing lungs and his frail heart.

Tony gets an idea.

Inside the front cover it says 'Sarah Rogers’, and Tony crosses that out with a pen.

He smiles, and picks up his cell phone.

“Hey, Stevie? You’re not going to believe what I found.”

He scribbles Steve’s name onto the inner cover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm back!  
> a lot of life happened, friend drama, major health issues, i got a girlfriend, i've been BUSY AF. but i've been having more time to write lately, so hopefully i can begin posting regularly again!  
> lemme know your thoughts on all this backstory! and yes, there is wayyyy more backstory to come!


	18. Heartbeat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky counts the beats like he would a song. He played piano for one whole year as a child, and although all he can remembers is Chopsticks and that minor keys are for sad songs, he still can keep time.
> 
> He's keeping time to the beating of Steve's heart, and Bucky wonders when time will end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for mentions of self harm/a suicide attempt

One... Two... Three... Four.......

Five.

Bucky remembers counting stars.

He remembers counting faint freckles.

He remembers counting the number of ribs he could feel when Steve was shirtless in his palms.

He remembers counting kisses down from Steve's forehead, down to his nose, then his lips, his jaw, his neck, his collarbones.

Numbers are beautiful in their own way, but Bucky isn't counting something pretty, he's counting down to a heartbeat stopping.

Steve's heart is uneven on the monitor, which doesn't beep as loudly as one would assume. It's a quiet noise, as are all the other machinery that's keeping him alive, but in the empty and vast hospital room every noise feels deafening. The whir of oxygen, the bubbles from the IV, the dialysis machinery, the squeak of doctors shoes on the cold tile floors outside.

Steve's shallow breathing.

Steve's heart beating unevenly.

Bucky counts the beats like he would a song. He played piano for one whole year as a child, and although all he can remembers is Chopsticks and that minor keys are for sad songs, he still can keep time.

He's keeping time to the beating of Steve's heart, and Bucky wonders when time will end.

He knew this would happen, he tells himself, some fucked up mix of comfort and self hatred. He knew Steve was sick, knew Steve was accident prone, knew Steve was reckless and rash and irresponsible and didn't take his meds on time and didn't eat or sleep enough and _why_ , _why,_ _why did you have to this to me Stevie? Why did you call him? We were gonna be okay, why did you ever..._ _ **why?**_

He reaches a hand out, and takes Steve's bony hand in his.

Steve almost looks like a corpse already.

His eyes are sunken and purple, the ever present bags under his eyes an infinity worse than usual. He's skinny, skinnier than before, almost as if someone stuck a vacuum hose under his skin and sucked everything out, flattening skin to the bone. His eyelashes are long, his eyes are shut. His breathing rattles in his chest, gently making his hospital gown rise and fall, making a pattern with the in and out noises of his oxygen machine.

Bucky runs a thumb over Steve's hand. His hands are wrapped tight in bandages, and Bucky knows whats underneath. The doctors at least told him that. Broken nails, fingers bloodied to the bone, bruised knuckles, torn skin. Tendon damage, and a few fractures on top, it'll be a miracle if he could ever sketch at all again.

Bucky traces his fingers over the pristine white bandages, and he wants nothing more than to hold Steve's hand. Not bandages, not mutilated flesh encased in plaster and medicine, he wants to be walking down the sidewalk with Steve's tiny fingers intertwined with his own.

The details Bucky knows are slim.

Natasha had called him up and told him that Steve was in the hospital, and she didn't get one more word out before he hung up and sped his car to the hospital, uncaring of red lights or bad weather.

The nurse manning the front desk was tired.

(Because only family and partners were allowed to see patients in a condition as bad as Steve. And within the few hours he had arrived, she had met one dashing black man claiming to be his husband, followed by a couple (the blond man said that he was Steve's husband and the redhead was his sister, the redhead said she was Steve's wife and the blond was Steve's brother, both at the same time. The nurse was tired, so she decided fuck it, procedure could be broken and she could take a cigarette break while husband-wife-brother-sister- _whatever_ visited Steve.)

Steve's trio of friends were in a waiting room when Bucky arrived.

Clint had managed to worm himself into a curled up position on the stiff hospital chairs and fell asleep. Sam had a handful of vending machine snacks resting on his stomach as he reclined sideways in a hospital chair, absentmindedly playing a game on his phone to distract him from things. And Natasha was pacing, back-and-forth at a rate that would give her a gold in the anxious pacing category of the anxiety olympics.

The two awake members had snapped their gaze to Bucky the second he burst through the door.

He rushed out a harried **“Explain.”**

Nat and Sam told him all they knew, which was slim.

Steve did something stupid and now he was in the hospital.

That was typical.

The something stupid involved Stark and Steve was barely clinging to life without a clue as to when he might wake up.

That wasn't typical.

Natasha was the only one brave enough to admit that Steve had been in the hospital for hours at this point, and that they had purposefully withheld it from Bucky.

Steve had been in a mess of surgeries and procedures and the three of them had only seen him for a few minutes themselves, plus there was a mountain of debate on whether Bucky and Steve were even talking.

But ultimately Bucky's side won out, the three figuring that while they went home to recharge, Bucky could watch over Steve.

And so he did.

Sam, Clint and Nat all went home. Clint passed out from exhaustion from a mix of his own depression and the stress over his best friend's life, and their dog Pizza curled up next to him in sympathy. Natasha skipped sleep entirely, instead heading to the punching bag they kept in the corner of the living room. Sam went to his apartment and booted up the first mindless video game he could find, the clicking of his mouse and slamming of his keys being the only noise in his apartment, but it was just enough to drown out his thoughts.

They each coped in their own way.

Bucky maneuvered his way through the hospital like he was on one of his missions. The tired nurse didn't even question him, she merely flicked her thumb in the direction of Steve's room. Bucky offered a polite thank you, and braced himself before stepping in and shutting the door behind him.

Steve looked so goddamn broken.

Small in the hospital bed, pale against the sheets, looking more like bandages and tubes and machinery rather than himself.

Bucky moved his way in and set one of the chairs closer to Steve's bed, and he sat, and he watched, and he waited.

And eventually he started counting heartbeats, and eventually he took Steve's hand in his.

That was how he wound up here.

Bucky heaves a sigh.

“You better wake up,” he whispers. He doesn't know if Steve can hear him. “You _have_ to wake up. I... I didn't get to say what you said to me. During the fight. That fucking _stupid_ fight. The thing you said wasn't stupid, and I don't want to say it back now because you're kind of in a coma and I want to say it when I know you're listening. But the fight, fuck, I'm sorry. If... I shouldn't have... Maybe... **Fuck**. This is my fault.”

The soldier didn't cry.

Neither did James.

“If I never started that stupid fight you wouldn't have done anything and you wouldn't be here and this is my fault, it's all my fault.”

Bucky _sobs_.

His eyes are tired and puffy, and the tears roll smoothly down his stubbly cheeks. His shoulders shudder, and soon enough he's gasping for breath, and its a miracle that none of the doctors can hear his breakdown.

He lifts up Steve's hand and clasps it in both of his, tilting his head down to press Steve's hand to his head.

“I'm sorry, Steve.”

His voice is hoarse, but he never meant any words so sincerely before.

Like tides receding or shopping carts being corraled back into stores, Bucky's emotions calm down. His stobbing eases into gentle tears, and those dry up eventually too. The words on his tongue die. The thoughts in his head stop.

Nothing exists but the small man in the hospital bed before him.

Bucky isn't quite sure how long he sits there. He shifted back to one hand clasping Steve's, resting on the bed. The shadows move about the room, showing the moon arching across the sky.

The heart monitor beeps.

_One... Two... Three... Four..._

Bucky lifts up his free hand, the metal one, and gently runs it across the uneven texture of Steve's bandages. He slides his cool metal hand down to his bony wrist, and wonders what holding Steve's hands will feel like when they're free from their bandage prison.

Steve's skin and bones, and Bucky doesn't have to even press to easily feel the bones, tendons, veins, lying underneath his skin. Metal sensors ring, he can feel every pulse, every twitch.

And the skin's uneven.

Bucky frowns slightly, and gently turns over Steve's arm, exposing his inner wrist.

There's a few cuts, a few butterfly bandages, but there's also _scars_.

Some are haphazardly slashed across skin, some are more uniform, and some are deep.

Bucky knows scars.

He knows that scars that deep aren't the kind you get on accident, and they generally aren't the kind of scars you live after receiving.

His eyes turn up from the deep mark to Steve's still face.

“Stevie,” Bucky says, nothing but sadness lacing his tone.

“He'd be pissed at you for that.”

Bucky goes rigid in an instant. All emotion is wiped entirely from his face, and he coldly turns to see the man in the doorway.

“He's very possessive about his scars, he'd be pissed at you finding out this way,” Tony Stark says, as he moves into the room. “I would suggest playing dumb about it, but hospital gowns have short sleeves, he's gonna know you visited, he'll piece it together. He's smart, like that.”

Tony saunters over to the hospital window, pulling aside the curtains a bit more so he can see the vast view outside.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing here?” the solider asks.

Because this isn't Bucky.

This isn't even James.

He's reverted to his primal state, to the persona who kills without flinching and hurts without caring.

His eyes go cold, and even though Tony is still facing the window, he fixes him with a icy glare. The room fills with tension, anger practically radiating from the soldier.

Tony turns around, and there might actually be remorse in his eyes. The solider doesn't give him the benefit of the doubt, though.

“He's my friend too,” Tony says, his voice... meek? Faint? This doesn't line up, the soldier thinks. Tony continues before he can process. “Fuck, I put him here. Least I can do is pay for his bills and the best room possible and check up on him and offer anything else in my power, which, y'know, I have a lot of power. So don't get in a hissy fit over me being here, I'm trying to help.”

Consider this target analyzed.

Bucky gently lays Steve's hand down on the bed, and then the soldier rises from his chair.

“You think you're worthless,” he states, no emotion in his voice, his eyes boring holes into Tony's, “You think you're utterly worthless. And you're right. The things you've done, the effect you had on people, I know that your existence has ruined the life of countless others. And you know it too. You're here to fling money at Steve and make smarmy jokes to mask your pain, because you're too fucking full of yourself to ever talk about your goddamn problems for once. Steve's going to resent you for it, and you're going to use it as an excuse to run back to your lab and make more magic potions to try to win him over again. And it won't work. It will _never_ work. Steve doesn't operate like that. And he would be a hell of a lot better off without you.”

Tony stares at him.

The soldier stares back.

Tony blinks, and gives a little half shrug.

“You hit the nail on the head,” he says, and the solider is a tad bit caught off guard by him _agreeing,_ “I'm an emotionally constipated rich kid who's used to flinging money at his problems to make them go away. Congratulations, you're one of the latest in a long line of people to psycho-analyze me. I should pay you a therapy fee.”

There's an undertone of rage.

Tony moves forward. Not with the grace of a solider, with the determination of a man who lost everything.

He stops at the other side of Steve's hospital bed, the sleeping man being the only thing between the two.

“But don't you fucking _dare_ try and rip Steve from me. I hurt him. I'm trying to fix things. I'm shit at it, but I'm _trying_. Everything we've done together, we grew up together, we mourned together, we went through life together, I'm trying to make up for every fucking second I hurt him. And don't you try to stop me. He's... he's my only family left. I refuse to lose him.”

Tony glances down at Steve's sleeping face.

The soldier _definitely_ sees remorse now.

“If you hurt him I will use every form of torture I know on you.”

“I already deserve it,” Tony says. He looks up, and his casual mask is back over his emotions once more. “Anyways, now that the heated spat is over, you can go home.”

“I'm not leaving him alone with you.”

“You don't have to,” another voice pipes up. Natasha reveals herself from the doorway, managing three cups of coffee in her hand. “I was wondering how long this dick measuring contest was going to last.”

“Well, considering my sexual history-”

“I'm gonna stop you right there, Stark,” Nat says. She passes one of the paper cups of coffee to Bucky. She takes a sip from another. She holds one out to Tony, and Tony reaches out to take it, before Nat flicks her wrist and sends the empty paper cup of coffee lies into the trash. Tony pouts.

“Look,” Nat says, “James, you have issues, and you're talking about shit you don't even know about. Talk to Steve when he wakes up, before you make opinions on Tony.”

“Are you defending me?” Tony asks.

Nat turns to him.

“I think you are the utmost scum of the earth and your very being repels me on a emotional, physical, mental, and molecular level,” she replies, “However, Steve cares about you. And you're the one who fucked this all up, so you're going to have to fix it. But you're not being alone with Steve.”

Nat turns to Bucky, who's becoming more of Bucky now that Nat is diffusing the situation. The soldier retreats into hiding once more, the worrying boyfriend returns.

“I'm gonna stick around, so don't worry okay?” Nat offers, “You've been here for almost twelve hours. Go home. Sleep. I'll call you if any change happens.”

Bucky's eyes dart off of her, to Stark, and then to Steve.

Every fiber of his being is telling him that being away from Steve is the worst thing possible, but ultimately Bucky knows he can't do shit for Steve if he's exhausted and strung out on anxiety and adrenaline from threatening multi-billionaires.

He'll go home, rest, and return.

“Thank you, Natasha,” he says.

He doesn't address Tony.

He wants to kiss Steve but not with an audience, so he settles for giving Steve's hand a soft caress, before turning and leaving the hospital room.

* * *

Bucky goes home.

He doesn't turn the lights on in his apartment, he doesn't make tea, he doesn't shower.

He goes to his room, shuts and locks the door behind him, pries himself out of his clothes that smell like the hospital.

He collapses onto his bed.

And Bucky sobs once more.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god its been almost a year since i updated this  
> BUT IM BACK!  
> so yeah, lemme know what you think~


End file.
